Factors Affecting Government Response to Katrina

I commented at Marginal Revolution on a Tyler Cowen post.
(I thought I did, but it's not visible, so here is a modified version):

Being a retired bureaucrat, not an economist,and operating from ignorance, I'd put another slant on the subject. Though I voted against Bush, I have to console myself that the criticism, some unwarranted)he's getting now is balanced by unwarranted praise after 9/11. I'm particularly interested in the comparison between Katrina and last year's hurricanes. Factors I haven't seen fully discussed include:

1. Wealth tells. The hurricanes last year hit Florida, much richer than Mississippi and Louisiana. The physical infrastructure is greater (more roads, more of everything) and the redundancies in networks are greater. Skinny people and skinny governments can have problems handling sudden illness. One truism of free markets is "you get what you pay for". That's also true for government. (It's no coincidence that Fairfax county, VA ranks high both on wealth and on government.) My impression is that all three states affected by Katrina are less than models of democracy. (See "All the Kings Men".)
   
2. Timing counts. Yes, those who live from check to check, whether pay or welfare, were hurt by the timing of Katrina. But Bush wasn't the only bureaucrat on vacation on August 28. French society notoriously shuts down in August. The U.S. government isn't that bad, but late August is a great vacation time.
   
3. "The American government system is a mess", a paraphrase of a BBC reporter, is right (as the Founders intended). Because we don't have the sort of hierarchical system Cuba has (a post referenced from Marginal Revolution said that Cuba had successfully evacuated last year in advance of a big hurricane using its system of and China and the USSR used to have, schools are the best way to get information into the community. I doubt that New Orleans schools were open yet, and if they were, the weekend timing would have cut off that avenue of coordinating evacuations.
4. The power of math. FEMA coordinates. In last year's Florida hurricanes they were coordinating mostly with one state and I don't think the Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, or regular military had any significant role. This year they had multiple states simultaneously, plus a bunch of new players. (Just ask your secretary about the amount of work to place one phone call versus setting up a conference call--as the number of parties expands the work involved increases exponentially, not arithmetically.) Assuming they trusted the state people, last year the only allocation issue was: do we have what you need? This year, the issue is: which state needs limited resources most.
5. Two disasters, not one. We've not had levee breaks and hurricane damage in one event for a long time. It pulls in more "stakeholders" to coordinate and poses new problems to learn.
   
6. Never underestimate learning. I say over and over, we never do things right the first time.
7. Finally, politics matters. Last year every bureaucrat in the Florida and federal governments knew that their boss's rear was on the line if the hurricanes weren't handled well. Neither George nor Jeb had to say a thing; it was in the air. That knowledge makes a difference on the margins, not the center. The question is: do you make one more phone call, check one more city block, bite your tongue a little harder to work cooperatively with someone in another agency. Knowing the big boss will get very excited over failure helps then. This year, George is a lame duck, the Louisiana governor is a Democrat, so....

Regardless of the above, neither Albaugh nor Brown nor Brown's no. 2 should have been appointed to that job. That's Bush's culpability--personnel selection.