Jindal, McCain, Katrina »
Mandalay reblogged Pegobry’s link to an Atlantic post about Bobby Jindal, certainly the most impressive phenomenon to emerge from Louisiana in many years (I am here excluding athletes and musicians). Jindal is the only politician I’ve cared about in many years, an ethical and brilliant man whose defeat by Blanco was as great a tragedy for Louisiana (and New Orleans) as any other government blunder after Katrina. Even Blanco knew this, and didn’t run for reelection, all but conceding that Jindal needed to take over if this state is to have any hope at all.
Reading about Jindal is always satisfying to me, but I wanted to note something else in the article:
Bush detractors get mad when I say this, but it really is true that the total ineptitude of the state and local governments was a major reason that things went so tragically wrong during Katrina.
I am a Bush detractor, and I’m particularly disgusted with his callow indifference to poor, black, Catholic New Orleans in the wake of one of America’s worst natural disasters. I don’t want to belabor the point here, but I feel that New Orleans’ cultural contributions to the South and to the United States are subtle, easily overlooked, and critical to our national identity; and that Bush’s manifest and undeniable lack of interest in helping the city constitute a level of cultural violence I thought he reserved for Baghdad’s museums.
However, McArdle is absolutely right: while Bush, FEMA, and the unfortunate Michael Brown were less than respectable, there is no question that the state and local governments of the area were pitiful, disgraceful, contemptible in their incompetence and eventual venality. One need only look to Mississippi (Mississippi!) to see what able local governments were able to accomplish.
I would note only that New Orleans had as daunting a task before its sorry government and impoverished and indolent citizenry as any in American urban history, and in this crisis I had expected that the federal government would do whatever it had to, would take command and lead, rather than shrugging and saying, “Damn, everyone there is corrupt and crazy!”
That may be the case, but that is precisely why we hoped for decisive and meaningful oversight and involvement by a federal government that, in the end, seemed to eventually conclude that nation-building in third-world Louisiana simply wasn’t worth the trouble.