By the "mainstream" media, that is.  I ask that question because my post on Governor Sebelius reminded me of the little windstorm that hit this area last December, killing 15 people and knocking out much of the area for days.  Articles in our local newspapers agreed that government had responded inadequately, but cast no blame on any elected official.

For example, here's a Seattle Times article from last month on a United Way report on the storm in King County.  The reporter, Marsha King, agrees that things went wrong in the response to the storm — but blames no one in particular.

Here's a typical paragraph:

Regulation and oversight of emergency preparedness in long-term-care facilities have been inadequate to meet residents' basic needs in a disaster.  Many people in facilities inadequately equipped with backup power suffered.  Some had fragile medical conditions that depended on electricity to power oxygen machines and wheelchairs.

And whose fault was that?  No one, at least no elected official, if we go by the article.   In fact, King does not even name an elected official in the article.

Which elected officials should be blamed for these problems?  The top elected officials in this area are Washington state Governor Chris Gregoire and King County Executive Ron Sims.  Other officials deserve some share of the blame, too, but those two are the ones we should start with.

What did Sims and Gregoire do during the storm?  To find out the answer to that question I read the United Way report mentioned in the article and a similar report covering the whole state produced by the Washington State Military Department, which reports to Governor Gregoire.  After reading through both reports, I can answer the question of what Sims and Gregoire did during the storm.  The short answer is not much.  There isn't a long answer.  Each issued an emergency proclamation, and Gregoire activated some units of the National Guard to provide generators for some emergency shelters.  That's it.

Did any "mainstream" journalists blame the executive and the governor for their failures to act?   If so, I missed it.  I didn't even see any of our local journalists ask Sims or Gregoire about their performance during the storm.  (One would like to think that all journalists are curious, inquiring folks, but I have found, to my great disappointment, that not all of them are.)

There is one thing I have left out of this post to this point, which just might be relevant, though I hate to suggest that our local journalists could be so unprofessional.  Sims and Gregoire are both Democrats.  You don't think that explains why they haven't been held to account for their failures last December?  Do you?

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(Gregoire gets a little more credit than Sims, since she did a little more and since she did ask for a report on what went wrong.)