Paul Light Quotations

The person at the top matters most. You can shuffle the deck, but the president is the ace of spades, and he's not going to change.

There is a profession of disaster preparedness. It is a well-developed profession. Witt came out of that community. Witt had a very good Rolodex, and at the end of the day, that's really important.

My experience is that young people will put up with a low salary and almost self-finance for the chance to learn something new and make a difference.

From what I know of the vulnerabilities of these cash programs and the very poor tracking systems in FEMA, I'd be surprised if there weren't lots of false claims, erroneous payouts and wasted resources.

He's become such a lightning rod. Much of the public blames him for everything that's gone wrong in the Bush administration.

Habitat (for Humanity) will build you a house, and it will build 500 other houses. It won't build 10,000 houses.

I think Bush takes a big hit. He's vulnerable on it, even if it's not totally fair.

I think the 20,000 employees of immigration and customs enforcement have got to be scratching their heads, and saying, am I going to take orders from this particular person who has never held a gun in her hand?

What were they thinking? You know a hurricane's going to knock down cell phone towers,

The paradox of this vice president is the things that made him so valuable in the beginning and so important to the president - his willingness to take the lead and be a strong visible advocate on some issues - have come back to haunt him. It's almost like everything that's bad in the administration has come back to stick to Dick Cheney .

You go to the FBI where they investigate the answers to your forms, there are only so many FBI agents available to do that. Then you go to the office of government ethics, where they clear your financial disclosure and cure any conflicts of interest you might have,

There's a general sense that the charitable sector has the touch needed, a better feel for the communities affected.

These scandals don't have very much impact on public opinion because opinion couldn't be much worse. They just reinforce what the public already believes.

Sacking the president isn't the panacea for what ails the Red Cross.

They've been getting slower and slower, and the vacancy rates have been climbing.

It's a rare moment when you get a housecleaning like this. It could presage a strong turnaround for an agency that's been adrift for years if not decades.

The basic question is, will the public listen to the government in the future, and that's a critically important question. It is entirely possible this could have a significant impact on the public's willingness to listen to their government, police, fire and charity officials in the event of another catastrophe in another city.

It's hugely embarrassing for the sector. I don't believe there is any malfeasance here. But . . . the notion that the Red Cross simply cannot track where the money is going feeds into this growing concern that charities cannot be trusted to spend their money wisely.

It's hugely embarrassing for the sector, ... I don't believe there is any malfeasance here. But . . . the notion that the Red Cross simply cannot track where the money is going feeds into this growing concern that charities cannot be trusted to spend their money wisely.

These things become symptoms of a broader disquiet with Cheney.

If you don't believe what the president believes or more generally what the White House believes, you're not going to get a second look and that narrows the pool to a very small number of people,

If you say that only conservative Republicans need apply, then you have diminished the pool of potential candidates significantly,

If you were a Democrat, you'd probably get hammered for it. There's an irony there. You've got a Republican president overseeing the creation of a large, new department. But I don't think he'll get criticized for it.

He's surrounded by people who agree with him.

Cheney becomes a bit of an albatross except with the base, where he's a real rock star, ... It'll be less possible for him to make campaign trips because this issue will dog him.

These guys kind of have a deer-in-the headlights look; they haven't been through this kind of thing and it shows. I'm afraid FEMA has gone backwards in time to the old era of a more traditional campaign-loyalty position.