No one here relieves the controller from assignment of some major portion of the "cause" component of the cause-and-effect sequences in this incident. Where the analysis - well, if one could call it that, but anyhow - goes from there . . . . So as SLF/att'y and someone interested in how the NAS will be repaired or modified or insert-your-choice-of-verb in the aftermath of this thankfully benign incident (no injuries, no crash), just a couple of further comments.
FAA reauthorization legislation is actually quite important in addressing such deficiencies in the NAS as the Austin incident exposes, or "areas ripe for improvement" if you prefer a less critical tone and posture. But at this time, FAA awaits a permanent head (Administrator). Thing is, inasmuch as knowledgeable and experienced aviation pro's have diverging views about what the incident reveals, it is (imo) folly, delusional, just plain wrong incorrect and invalid, to assert that an individual who has succeeded in ordering people around is the right person to coordinate and reconcile the differing assessments into a program of action to correct what needs correcting. It's almost as if even the pilots and other aviation pro's don't fully understand what happened - I said 'almost as if' - but then someone who does not know this field is supposed to dish out the silver bullets of solutions. Okay. I'll now proceed to try, at least, to leave this horse for actually dead (unless someone saw Elvis riding out on it).
About the causes and effects ..... In hearing the R/T from FDX1432, and noticing that there was not full realization of the risks that - at that specific moment - had sprung up, as just a member of the flying public my impression, if you stop the tape right there, is that there is a pretty consistent presumption that things are being done correctly. In general. In most if not nearly all operations. The pilot, in other words, didn't run through a list of memory items about what might have been going wrong with regard to the other traffic and the clearance. Such clearances - with departing traffic on the runway - are not unusual, correct? Yes, there were indications, actually perceptible, that all had not been done correctly and was continuing in an incorrect unfolding. But that presumption got in the way. Really, and I'm ducking after this, it seems not so different from the business traveler or leisure traveler in seat 22A who sees or hears something unusual on board the aircraft and thinks, "hey, the crew, the people in the NAS, they know what they're doing, know their jobs, it's the safest way to travel by far."
Incidentally, reauthorization is the one certain way of doing the utmost to keep it that way.