Experts have given New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg good reviews for their performances after hurricane Sandy.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo greets residents of the Far Rockaways section of the Queens borough of New York, Nov. 10. Despite power returning to many neighborhoods in the metropolitan area, some residents of the Far Rockaways continue to live without power and heat due to damage caused by Superstorm Sandy.
John Minchillo/AP
EnlargeFor New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, leadership often came with an empathetic hug. For New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, it came with an angry tirade at utilities slow to restore power. For New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it came with cool, businesslike assurance.
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Experts in leadership and disaster response interviewed by The Associated Press gave all three chief executives high marks for their performance so far in Superstorm Sandy, a disaster that left more than 100 people dead and presented perhaps the biggest crisis-management test yet for three Northeastern politicians who have all been rumored to hold presidential ambitions.
"Throughout the country, what the American people seek is a kind of authenticity in their public leaders, and these three guys have demonstrated that authenticity throughout this crisis," said Syracuse University political science professor Robert McClure.
Most of those interviewed said Christie stood out for being the most outspoken and ahead of the curve, whether he was ordering gas rationing nearly a week before anyone else, putting his?GOP?credentials on the line to praise the Obama administration's response or using a televised briefing to comfort children with a simple: "Don't be scared."
He got so much attention that he even poked a bit of fun at himself with a cameo over the weekend on "Saturday Night Live," where he appeared in the familiar blue fleece jacket that he has worn while touring the state following the storm.
All three men took firm command before Sandy arrived. Cuomo closed New York City's subways and tunnels hours before there was a threat of flooding and strategically "pre-positioned resources" days before, a move the federal transportation secretary later praised. Christie struck a get-tough note in ordering people to clear out along the coast, barking, "Don't be stupid" on Twitter. Bloomberg calmly ordered an evacuation of the city's low-lying areas.
And their leadership continued after the storm had passed.
Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian who wrote an award-winning book on 2005's Hurricane Katrina and has also written about Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Theodore Roosevelt and Gerald Ford, said the first rule in a disaster is to rush rescue and relief to the victims to keep the death toll down.
"While Sandy has been tragic, with the amount of rescues that have taken place and the amount of life-saving that has gone down, it has helped keep the death toll not commensurate to the damage," he said. "In Hurricane Katrina, you lost 2,000 people. And a lot of them died because nobody got to them for a week."
Not everything went perfectly. Many of Sandy's victims have complained that the power outages went on for too long, that the gas station lines were infuriating, and that temporary housing against November's cold seemed to be an afterthought.
At times, the crisis threw all three men off balance: Bloomberg reversed himself in the face of a huge backlash and canceled the New York City Marathon, Christie picked a fight with the Atlantic City mayor for sending people to city shelters instead of evacuating them, and Cuomo's attacks on utilities thudded when he took on the Long Island Power Authority, a state utility over which he has some control.
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