1) Local government had to deal most directly with angry people who thought they had been wronged. State government was trying to get more national support. National government was doing nothing but holding press conferences and lying to the public.
2) The national government showed an unacceptable lack of urgency to the Katrina situation. State and local governments did the very best that they could with the limited resources that they had.
Flying over the disaster area and holding press conferences over 1,000 miles away doesn't help anything. You need to be on the ground pulling trapped people out of their houses, offering help, providing medicine, water, or food. The level of incompetence that the Bush administration displayed was astonishing. People were dying because their government abandoned them. A government which was supposed to be there for the people no matter what. I am absolutely disgusted with how our elected officials performed that day. FEMA was pathetic, it took them almost a week to get supplies on the ground. Meanwhile people were dying.
We all know our political leaders' jobs are hard. Grow up, having a difficult job and being tired is no excuse for lying and ignoring the real problems at hand. You know who was tired? The single mother who lost her husband in the flood and now has to take care of her three children all by herself. The recently orphaned 14 year old boy is tired. To sit on television and talk about how hard your job is while 900 people die is despicable.
The real heroes of this whole crisis are the local governments and the everyday citizens who helped rescue people from their homes. They continued to try and alleviate the problem even when their national government basically said good luck and that's it.