Neither one can handle the National Weather Service.
As reported in 2012:
Santorum also accused the weather service’s National Hurricane Center of flubbing its forecasts for Hurricane Katrina’s initial landfall in Florida, despite the days of all-too-prescient warnings the agency had given that the storm would subsequently strike the Gulf Coast.
Governor Cuomo’s attempt to scapegoat the National Weather Service for an inaccurate forecast in advance is not only completely in error–the NWS did an outstanding job–but is a disservice to the public and to the hard-working staff of this federal agency. No forecast of such an historical disaster is going to be absolutely perfect, but no one who lives here can say this event was not well forecast in advance, or that the warning headlines of its impact to come were not well explained in advance…his statement is disinformation, purposeful or ill-informed.
Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, indeed.
I respect that politicians are under a lot of pressure to pander, but, from my perspective as a political scientist, this sort of thing particularly bothers me. Maybe this is the set-up for a joint run for president in 2016. True, as a ticket, Santorum/Cuomo lacks geographic and gender balance, but they could make a solid, bipartisan run for the anti-science vote. Beyond this, they should easily be able to find common ground on questions of governmental ethics.
Maybe they could tap Rod Blagojevich to be the new director of a revamped National Weather Service? All things are possible.