By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; A02

As Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff sat down for lunch yesterday on the seventh floor of the Heritage Foundation, a vivid scene from the post-9/11 world was unfolding outside the conference-room window.

Two blocks away at Union Station, a small grease fire had erupted on the grill at McDonald's. The blaze was quickly extinguished, but not before jittery security personnel ordered the terminal evacuated. Hundreds of shoppers, diners and rail passengers, heeding shouted warnings to flee the premises, flowed into the plaza outside, where emergency response vehicles joined the usual duck boats and tourist trolleys.

Chertoff aides watched the mayhem from the Heritage windows, but Chertoff himself missed the hullabaloo; one of his lunch partners explained that his security guards had ordered the blinds drawn.

It was just as well -- the secretary has enough crises to worry about these days.

A year after he took over from Tom Ridge at Homeland Security, Chertoff is getting much of the blame for the woeful Hurricane Katrina response, insufficient supervision of the Dubai port deal and domestic defenses that remain, by most accounts, unacceptably weak.

Earlier this month, the conservative magazine Human Events quoted administration officials as saying that Chertoff had "only a few days left" in the Cabinet. The White House denied it, but the rumors -- and calls for his head -- continue.

Yesterday, an hour before Chertoff addressed the International Association of Fire Fighters at the Hyatt on Capitol Hill, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) won vigorous applause from the firefighters for demanding Chertoff's ouster for his role in a "dangerously incompetent" administration.

All of this must have Chertoff, a former star prosecutor and top Justice Department official, wondering why he gave up his seat as a federal appellate judge for a position that earns him -- deservedly or not -- unending criticism.

"You gave up a lifetime appointment for this?" Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) marveled to Chertoff at a Senate hearing last month at which the secretary was getting abuse over Katrina.

"My wife reminds me of that periodically," Chertoff replied, ruefully.

Chertoff's problem is not, as Biden suggests, that he's incompetent. The secretary is highly accomplished. His problem, if anything, is he's a model technocrat in a position that sometimes demands a commanding leader.

A strikingly thin man with a high-pitched voice, pointy ears and droopy eyelids, Chertoff speaks of "the critical points of triangulation" and calls for a "properly risk-managed approach to critical infrastructure." He talks about the need for "total assets visibility" and favors "an integrated, sensible, systems-based approach." He desires "better information about the constituents of the supply chain." And instead of telling people that he's protecting them, he says that his department has "done a lot to elevate the general baseline of security in this country."

Relax, America: Your general security baseline is elevated because of a systems-based approach to critical triangulation points.

These kinds of statements -- all voiced at Heritage yesterday -- make the wiry Chertoff a big target for those building a case that the administration is lax about homeland security. The firefighters' president, Harold Schaitberger, began yesterday's conference with a speech complaining that "the administration and OMB have recommended drastic cuts" in first-responder programs.

Biden asked the crowd, almost all men, whether the administration was protecting Americans. "Well folks, the winds of Katrina and the shoddiness of the Dubai port deal . . . have answered the question," he said.

Chertoff, suffering from a cold, cleared his throat 10 times as he spoke to the firefighters and 20 more when talking at Heritage. He offered a series of explanations for the Katrina problems: "catastrophe of the century . . . a disaster is always an ugly thing . . . Mother Nature can be awfully tough to deal with."

He blended that with his technocratic explanations of DHS ("internal integration into a unified command structure") and attempts at high rhetoric that fell short. Pointing to photos of the Sept. 11, 2001, wreckage, Chertoff said: "You are really part of the war on terror, as well as the war against all hazards."

War Against All Hazards: WAAH?

Chertoff, pursued by reporters, was whisked from the building and into a waiting Chevy Suburban by a knot of aides and bodyguards -- and away to the relative safety of Heritage. There, after lunch, former attorney general Ed Meese introduced him by praising his "dynamic leadership."

Chertoff displayed that dynamism by giving the audience an earful about the need to "integrate all of your organs of power" to achieve "the totality of effort." A few of his listeners allowed their eyes to close.

Chertoff made a beeline for the exit after 30 minutes. "Because of the secretary's schedule, he's not able to take questions," Meese tried to explain. In the war against all hazards, a Q&A session probably would not elevate the general baseline of Chertoff's job security.