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Hunkering down last night under the howling winds of Sandy and reading every scrap of information on the storm, I was struck by the fact that seven years after Hurricane Katrina, local, state and federal officials were incredibly well prepared. Newark Mayor Cory Booker answered distress calls on Twitter; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie evacuated the shore; and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent in city workers to help evacuate NYU Tisch Hospital after its backup generator failed. There was a striking difference in leadership between these men and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, both of whom watched like deer staring blankly into headlights as Katrina approached in 2005.

There was also a difference of presidential leadership. George W. Bush named his friend Michael Brown, a lawyer and former director of the International Arabian Horse Association, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. No one would make that mistake again. President Obama not only picked an experienced disaster management expert — Craig Fugate, former director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management — but one from a key swing state, just in case. The relative smoothness with which the government handled the storm also reflected FEMA’s high level of funding: a battle Democrats won in the wake of Katrina, insisting that emergency funds, like payments for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, need not be offset by spending cuts or taxes. “The federal government’s response has been great. I was on the phone at midnight again last night with the President, personally, he has expedited the designation of New Jersey as a major disaster area,” Christie, a top surrogate for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said on NBC’s Today. “The President has been outstanding in this and so have the folks at FEMA.”