Bush oblivious of crony charges, appoints crony to oversee hurricane recovery

Donald E. Powell, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a major Texas backer of President Bush, was named federal coordinator of long-term hurricane recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced yesterday.

Wary of empowering a potential critic, administration officials from Vice President Cheney down have previously rejected calls by Republican senators and House members to name a federal recovery "czar" since Hurricane Katrina hit the region on Aug. 29.

But the administration's handling of the disaster has drawn increasingly broad complaints. Last week, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donahue criticized a lack of federal coordination and warned that failure to speed repairs to roads, levees, infrastructure and housing would prevent employers from returning.

Powell is well known to the president and raised more than $100,000 for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. He was chief executive of First National Bank of Amarillo, Tex., and head of the city's Chamber of Commerce. He was named chairman of Texas A&M University's board of regents in 1995 by then-Gov. Bush.

The headline of this story in the Post said, "Powell to Oversee Storm Recovery". I thought for a second that Bush had actually made an appointment based on ability, rather than cronyism or campaign cash and had appointed Colin Powell. I won't make that mistake again. Bush is simply ineducable.