Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has been critical of how President Obama and current NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg have handled the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy before, but he was particularly forceful during a Florida campaign appearance for Romney on Sunday:
Giuliani gives Obama credit for doing "a good job" for "maybe the first day or two of the storm," but after that he pronounces the President's conduct "disgraceful." In fact, he said he's never seen presidential mismanagement as bad as Obama's. He's stunned by the degree to which the media has been willing to stifle any follow-up questions about disaster recovery, so they could leave an Obama-friendly narrative of awesome crisis leadership in place throughout the election.
He's especially tough on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's inability to supply drinking water to the disaster area. "There are people in New York City who don???t have bottles of water like this," Giuliani said, holding up a small plastic bottle of drinking water. "See this little bottle of water? They don???t have it in New York. You know why? Because Barack Obama???s FEMA didn???t think to pre-position it. What, they didn't learn anything from Katrina?"
Giuliani contrasted this with the swift restoration of vital services under his administration after the 9/11 attacks. "Now, you watched Ground Zero, didn't you, on television?" he asked. "And you watched the lights on. You watched them working 24 hours a day. How do you think we did that? We brought generators in. Where the hell are the generators now? What good is his FEMA if they can???t get the generators to the people who don???t have electricity? What good is FEMA if they can???t get water to people? What good is FEMA if they can???t get food to people?"
