I Don't Often Agree With the Folks at the VC . . .

. . . but Orin Kerr nails what I was trying to say last night far better than I did:

First, I have absolutely no interest in assigning blame. My sense is that the crisis is sufficiently great that we need to be forward thinking right now. Assigning blame looks back; it's something you do when the emergency is over, and you have time to reconstruct what happened and see how you could do better next time. I don't think we're there yet. So for example, while I strongly agree with the many commenters that this should have been a state and local issue, the fact remains that the state and local governments seem to have been overwhelmed by the crisis and are not providing any kind of effective leadership. The key question is what to do next.

All I can add to this is that the best way to put real accountability into effect is to think very hard about who you vote for in 2006 and 2008.