From the WSJournal today, we learn that President
Bush’s visit to New Orleans yesterday was designed in part to
bolster Mayor Ray Nagin’s chances in his runoff for re-election
against Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. COME AGAIN?!?!?!?!?!?!? Every
time I start to forgive this White House for all its errors and
idiocies, it does something new that is so unfathomably wrongheaded
that it makes me wonder if the combined brain power of the entire
West Wing might be less than the intelligence of, say, James
Madison alone — on one of Madison’s BAD days, when he has had
insomnia and has a headache.
Let’s review the bidding on this one (as they say in the game of
bridge): Mayor Nagin is in general a moderate who supported GOP
gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal over Demo candidate (and
eventual victor) Kathleen Blanco last go round. Nagin first got
into office with large white support and large conservative
support. BUT, his good intentions even before Katrina were falling
prey to his overall incompetence. The police force, which had
actually been improved under liberal former mayor Marc Morial, had
fallen back into utter incompetence and corruption under Nagin. The
overall organizational efficiency and effectiveness of city
services also declined under Nagin. And then came Katrina, and the
120 buses left to flood rather than used for evacuations, and the
failure to implement existing city plans for hurricane disasters,
and all the horrors we saw on TV (a combined fault of Nagin,
Blanco, Michael Brown, Michael Chertoff and, yes, George Bush) —
and the mayor in cowardly flight to Dallas, and the mayor making
lunatic statements on TV, and his call for a “chocolate city” and
all sorts of other race-baiting, and…. you get the picture. Nagin
is a disaster not just waiting to happen, but an ongoing disaster.
Yet Bush wants to help Nagin win re-election! This is just flat-out
obscene. And WHY does Bush want Nagin? Because, reports the
WSJ, Bush doesn’t like the Landrieu family. U.S. Sen. Mary
Landrieu, Mitch’s brother, once said she wanted to punch poor W. in
the nose, and W. didn’t like that. Oh, the poor tender feelings of
our president!
But Mitch isn’t Mary. Mitch is basically a political moderate.
He’s very smart, and he’s competent. He loves New Orleans. He has
the ability to bridge the city’s racial divide. He is seen in most
quarters as a unifying figure not just on race, but politically as
well. He has few sharp edges, but he does have a sharp mind. Sure,
he’ll be tied in to some of the old Democratic patronage machines,
which is bad…. but not all patronage is corrupt, and frankly I
don’t care who gets the patronage if the work gets done more
efficiently and competently than Nagin’s regime did. Meanwhile, not
only is Nagin incompotent, but he has turned into a race-baiting
demagogue. How, pray tell, does it help the beleaguered citizens of
New Orleans if Nagin gets re-elected?
If this president really is trying hard, as the WSJ
reports, to “bolster Mr. Nagin’s political prospects with the
city’s white conservative establishment,” then he, Mr. Bush, our
president, is either a fool or a cynical manipulator or so petty
and so into political grudges (against MARY Landrieu, NOT Mitch, so
why punish Mitch and the people of New Orleans?) that he doesn’t
care if the people of New Orleans rot in Hades. Frankly, as I
wondered to myself as I wrote this article, there
is plenty of reason to think that the White House doesn’t care how
many New Orleanians suffer as long as it (the White House) can
change the demographics of the area to better serve what it
(mistakenly) considers to be GOP interests.
Message to President Bush: You’ve done enough damage to my home
city already. Please just get the bleep out of the way.
