And it was at that point that I realized, in fact, our whole administration realized, that we could not rely on Metropolitan Edison for the kind of information we needed to make decisions.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We owe a lot to Thomas Edison - if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight.
Well, I think first of all there was a failure to have real, clear information at our disposal. There was a real lack of situational awareness. We didn't have the capabilities on the ground to give us real-time, accurate assessments of the physical condition of the city.
I had moved out of the Edison Hotel because I couldn't pay the bill and was living at the Lincoln Hotel, where I couldn't pay the bill either, but it was cheaper.
We campaigned on the fact that we were going to have to take difficult decisions because of the state of the public finances. When we got into government we discovered that actually the public finances were in an even worse state than we thought.
The owners and managers were too stupid to realize we had brains.
One of our most difficult realizations was that - in the course of two years - a connecting hub in St. Louis had gone from something we thought we needed to something we could no longer afford.
We had to address information technology in the ways we had not before and give the agents the tools that they need to do their job more efficiently and more expeditiously.
I was the network president. I thought I knew everything.
I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.
Do you realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by candlelight?