July 25 (Bloomberg) -- These pundits. Listen to them and you'll always be led astray. Take the case of Hurricane Katrina.

According to the commentary unleashed last September, that disaster was supposed to be ``transformative,'' a landmark on the U.S. political landscape for years to come, altering the perceptions Americans had of their government and their leaders, and offering President George W. Bush the chance to revive his second term with a ``compassionate conservative'' program to eradicate poverty.

And that was just if you listened to me. Others were even more wild-eyed. Let this be a lesson to you.

It's now clear, as we get closer to the one-year anniversary of the hurricane (pundits like anniversaries, too) that Katrina's effect on U.S. culture, political and otherwise, was minimal.

Of course, there was some evidence early on that Katrina's larger political impact was being grossly overstated. Bush's approval rating in opinion polls, already low in the summer of 2005, took a further small dip after the hurricane. The dip wasn't surprising, considering that the earliest surveys of public opinion showed that as many as two out of three respondents thought Bush ``could have done more to speed up relief efforts.''

Vaporized

But by October, the Pew Research Center concluded the ``Katrina effect'' on the public had vaporized. The hurricane and its aftermath, its surveys showed, had done little to change the public's view of such large questions as the role of government or the future of race relations. The number of respondents paying ``very close attention'' to the continuing cleanup and rebuilding of the Gulf Coast had tumbled from 73 percent in October (more than a month after the hurricane hit) to 39 percent in December.

The attention of the Bush administration had wandered too. The president is surrounded by political operatives whose favorite mode of speech is overstatement, but even they outdid themselves in assessing the importance of the president's plan to rebuild New Orleans.

It was ``bold,'' ``historic,'' ``an unprecedented effort to use conservative means to eradicate poverty.'' It was really expensive, too.

There would be tax breaks for small business, aid to private charities, checks for childcare and transportation, and vouchers for job training, education, and housing, plus an idea the Bush people called ``urban homesteading,'' patterned after the government program most beloved by big-government conservatives, the Homestead Act of 1862.

Landfall, Windfall

Ten months on, very little of this program survives, having perished of neglect from the Republican Congress and the administration.

Yet never fear: The failure of Bush's program hasn't meant that less money was spent on Katrina's aftermath, or that the money has been spent more wisely. Here too the Katrina hubbub quickly subsided into business as usual.

Within 10 days of Katrina's landfall, Congress had allocated $62 billion for relief -- one quick gusher of $10 billion, followed a week later by $52 billion more. A few brave lawmakers dared to say out loud that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with the supervising Department of Homeland Security, wouldn't be able to spend so much money both quickly and responsibly.

``I'm not saying we don't have to spend this money,'' Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona told me then. ``But not in increments of $50 billion at a time. How about $10 billion a week for five weeks?''

Significant Flaws

Smaller increments, Flake said, would force FEMA to use the money wisely and justify its expenditures to Congress as they were made.

Flake was ignored -- ridiculed, even. Yet he's had the good grace not to gloat even as, over the last several months, he's been proved right. In February, the Government Accountability Office issued a report identifying ``significant flaws in the process for registering disaster victims that leave the federal government vulnerable to fraud and abuse.''

Thousands of aid recipients -- the GAO declined to quantify it more precisely -- collected money using bogus Social Security numbers, including those of Louisiana prisoners. In a random check of 200 properties registered as ``damaged,'' at least 80 were either vacant lots or nonexistent apartments.

Beer, Car Keys

Last week, the GAO issued a similar report on the government's inability to control abuse of credit cards issued to disaster workers. FEMA employees, for example, bought $300,000 worth of laptop computers and $84,000 worth of printers -- all of which went unused and have now disappeared.

Of the money let loose by Congress in 10 days last September, no one yet knows how much was ill-spent, but more than $1.4 billion of fraud and abuse have already been identified. The GAO estimates the fraud rate in some programs to be 16 percent or more.

A final figure, if one can ever be reached, would be staggering -- proving yet again the maxim first identified by the humorist P.J. O'Rourke: Giving taxpayer money to the federal government is like giving beer and car keys to teenage boys.

Over the weekend, spokesmen for the Department of Homeland Security announced reforms that would change the way FEMA and other disaster agencies dispense aid. No more business as usual, was the implication. We'll see how long it takes some pundit to call the new rules ``transformative.''

(Andrew Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News. In 1992, he wrote speeches for President George H.W. Bush. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Andrew Ferguson in Washington at aferguson62@yahoo.com

Last Updated: July 25, 2006 00:06 EDT