La. Confidential

Remember that wonderful scene towards the end of LA Confidential, after the shootout at the Victory Motel. Under interrogation, Det. Lt. Exley smiles to himself because he knows what the LAPD Internal Affairs guys are thinking about doing in the face of the huge scandal about to erupt.

LOEW: The press would have a field day with this.

CHIEF: (a beat) When in doubt, feed them a hero. In this case, we'll need more than one. [link

Okay, now we're being fed our first Katrina hero -- the guy that Mayor Nagin calls "the John Wayne dude" -- Lt. Gen. Russel Honore.

And he is cool. Asked a question whose premise he didn't like during a press conference, he took a giant step forward and barked, "That's BS. That's just BS." The FEMA director and director of Homeland Security, who had been standing at the podium with him, jumped backed, startled.

So Honore is impressive, makes for good copy and video, and is a force to be reckoned with. He's getting things done in New Orleans.

So there's hero No. 1.

But there has to be at least a hero No. 2, if not heroes Nos. 2 and 3.

Nagin and Blanco are out of the running. Too pre-smeared. And anybody the Bush administration sends out now is simply arriving at the scene far too late.

My guess: The hero will be a lower level municipal employee who risked drowning and/or electrocution manning levees and pumps.

Or maybe the hero will be the "incredible civilian." I'm thinking of a sixty-ish black grandmother, partially blind from diabetes and hands gnarled from arthritis, who drove a rusty and clanky bus filled with special needs orphans hundreds of miles out of the city, just ahead of the hurricane. Plus -- she had never driven a stick-shift before.

Just a guess.