WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) ? We got it all wrong, and by we I mean everyone except President George W. Bush. By comparison to other public officials on the job ? or not ? during Hurricane Katrina, Brownie did do a heckuva job.

It turns out that of all the officials at the Department of Homeland Security, it was Michael Brown, the former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief, who warned how bad the storm would be, that red tape would have to be cut to get enough equipment and manpower to the scene. Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff is the dolt who didn't have a clue and flew off to Atlanta for a conference on bird flu, a problem for sure, but not one about to kill 1,300 people.

This role-reversal comes through on a tape released on March 1 by the Associated Press that is must-see cinema verit?. With the bad lighting and production values of a porn flick, it's a reminder of how packaged and coached the president usually is.

While his assessment of Brownie turns out to be better than we thought, the tape shows that his second-most memorable line during the hurricane, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," was dead wrong. Almost everyone did.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, was crystal clear that the New Orleans levees were "a very, very grave concern", which was also raised by concerned local officials. Mayfield predicted that the storm would be bigger than Hurricane Andrew, which devastated South Florida in 1992.

Brown looks absolutely prescient. He expressed his concerns that there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees to the Superdome and that the Superdome was a bad place to send them anyway, located as it was below sea level with a weak roof. He even predicted "a catastrophe within a catastrophe", which is what the place turned into.

The tape brings out what a review of Katrina by the House Republicans and the Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security did not. By the time they got to the debacle, the screenplay had been written and roles assigned.

Brownie was a bumbling crony in a job over his head, who couldn't see what was in front of his eyes and act on it. He was taken to the woodshed never to get out.

On the other hand, Chertoff, tall, well-spoken, calm, got a going over, but wasn't shown the door. The fact is that big-shot establishment lawyers who served as clerks on the US Supreme Court and know enough senators to get approved to a seat for life on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals don't get fired. Folks from the International Arabian Horse Association, who feed lower on the food chain, do.

The camera isn't good enough to catch Bush's expressions, but his body language suggests he's anxious to get out of that small, windowless room and get back to clearing himself some brush. He asked no questions and piped up at the end to deliver a rallying cry to the troops that they would get whatever they needed from a federal government on top of the situation.

"We are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," Bush can be heard saying.

Try telling that to the people left to die in hospitals and nursing homes and folks in New Orleans, whose promised trailers are sitting in the mud in Arkansas.

In Mississippi, the red state next door, citizens have fared better, though even Republican Governor Haley Barbour hasn't gotten everything promised that day.

According to another transcript, Brown went directly to the president with his worries when he couldn't get Chertoff's attention. Bush, somehow, wasn't alarmed enough by Brown's reports to do anything. Indeed, in an interview this week on ABC television, the president said he had no idea people in New Orleans were desperately in need of help until he saw them on TV "screaming for help".

At hearings in February, Norm Coleman, Republican Senator from Minnesota, not only told Brown that he was a failure but with great drama said Brown was "not prepared to put a mirror in front of your face and recognise your own inadequacies".

How wrong that was. Brown has been the only person owning up to and paying a price for his errors.

Brown replied: "Senator, with all due respect, what do you want me to say? I have admitted to mistakes publicly. I've admitted to mistakes in hearings. What more, Senator Coleman, do you want from me?"

There's no place to go to get your good name back in Washington, which so ruthlessly takes it away. Brown's no candidate for a Medal of Freedom, but neither should he be the poster child for all that went wrong in New Orleans.

For what it's worth, Brownie, I hope you get credit for the warnings you issued and the concerns you expressed. Maybe Senator Coleman will put a mirror in front of his face and give you a call.