"Clear command and control, clear coordination, clear communication."

According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Governor Bobby Jindal took full command during the crisis by pushing the bureaucracy aside and making people accountable especially in  evacuating more than 1000 critical care patients  the day before Hurricane Oscar hit.

Jindal knew the storm's initial high winds would ground aircraft by 9 p.m., so he had less than 20 hours to mobilize a key part of one of the largest medical evacuations in the nation's history, without sufficient resources in hand. Otherwise, the patients, along with the nurses and doctors attending them, could risk remaining in Gustav's path.

"You could see it in his eye," said Alan Levine, the state's health secretary. "He didn't want any bureaucracy to get in the way."

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At the center of this reinvented decision-making system, according to interviews with those in the middle of the process, was Jindal, 37, who was leading a brand new team of aides and Cabinet members with a little more than seven months of experience in office. Adding to the pressure, Gustav drew the media's spotlight during the Republican National Convention, putting Jindal and his GOP administration's performance on a national stage even though he had never in his career faced any crisis so serious.

"I'd give him an A-plus," said Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who sat beside Jindal at the state command group meetings. "He managed it very, very, very well."

After so many failures in the wake of Katrina, it's great to hear how much better the coordinated response has been this time around - and the lack of partisan rancor.

Landrieu, who witnessed Katrina at the emergency center and on the ground, played an adviser role to Jindal. He has experience with emergencies on local, state and national levels of government. His sister, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., was at the emergency center on the day of the storm. As a leading Democrat in the state who often opposes Republican politicians, Mitch Landrieu is keenly aware of the deep partisanship and mistrust that built up between Democrat Blanco and President Bush's Republican administration during Katrina.

This time, "there were no partisan walls, there was no paranoia," he said.

Instead, there was "clear command and control, clear coordination, clear communication," Landrieu said.