Top 10 Worst Cabinet Members

Sometimes those purported to be the best and the brightest are anything but. In the spirit of not making the same mistakes twice, TIME examines some of modern history's less-than-fabulous Cabinet appointments

Michael Brown - Director of FEMA*, 2003-2005

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
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President Bush infamously saluted the one-time FEMA head with a hearty, "Heckuva job, Brownie," but Brown's thin resume (Arabian horses, anyone?) and dismal response to Hurricane Katrina made him a national whipping boy in the storm's aftermath and a icon of an ineffectual administration.

*Director of FEMA is no longer a Cabinet-level position; the agency was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

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