Does the president have any way to help the people of a possible natural disaster before it hits?
Maybe you need to retrieve your head from Pres. Bush's posterior and realize that he bunged that situation up by not being pro-active with the help. Now, that is not to say that there wasn't blame on the state of louisiana's part as well, but Bush simply did nothing........oh....except vacation. 
The Federal Agencies with a few exceptions such as the Coast Guard are NOT allowed by law to do anything UNTIL the states request federal assistance. The sad truth is that FEMA and a host of other agencies were ready to go before Katrina hit (I know because I had warning orders to go TAD from my Coast Guard command to assist FEMA in setting up communications in the area) 2 days before Katrina made landfall. It took days after it hit before a formal request was ever received at the federal level. The state government failed to be pro-active, not Bush.
But for the sake of argument, had Bush been pro-active and sent in Federal troops, and law enforcement, to take control of the situation before being asked by the state, what do you think people would have said? You know damn well he would have been raked over the coals for violating the states rights, and over exceeding his powers as President.
The only fault in that situation was at the local and state government level. As soon as the federal request was sent, the Feds were on the way ready to go to work. We hit the ground running once we were finally asked to show up.
