Fraters Libertas

Nobody's Fault But Yours

I haven't had anything to say about the response to Hurricane Katrina in the past few weeks because, frankly, enough has been said by everyone else. By now, we're all well aware of the failures at every level of government to adequately deal with this unprecedented disaster.

Today, however, I ran across this piece containing New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's incredibly lame response to the Feds questioning his decision to send thousands of people back into the city prematurely and just had to comment.

The piece reads:

...Nagin is now re-thinking the timetable for bringing people back to the city...because of "external factors," such as a tropical storm that's headed toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Earlier, Nagin bristled at what he suggested was federal interference. He said the federal official in charge of the recovery effort, Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, was acting like "the newly crowned federal mayor of New Orleans."

Perhaps a "federal mayor" is just what the city of New Orleans needs right now since the current mayor seems to be more interested in placing blame than getting things done.

Hop in your Wayback Machines, if you please, and recall the September 1 interview of Mayor Nagin conducted by WWL-AM radio correspondent Garland Robinette:

NAGIN: You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."
WWL: Who'd you say that to?
NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.

Later on in the same interview:

NAGIN: And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.
WWL: What can we do here?
NAGIN: Keep talking about it.
WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?
NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

There's a certain twisted consistency in Nagin's ranting here. He takes the blame for absolutely nothing yet wants every last ounce of credit for beginning to restore normalcy to his decimated city. When the water was fifteen feet high and rising, Nagin was begging for the federal government to swoop in and drain his city, jail his looters, reopen his French Quarter and then get busy reanimating his dead.

Now that the worst has seemingly passed, Nagin demands that the Feds stay out of his business so he can stand atop a newly reconstructed levee and claim to have reopened the City of New Orleans despite the incompetence of George Bush, FEMA, the Minnesota Vikings and any other group of bumbling fools he can point a finger at.

This is ridiculous? I agree wholeheartedly, Mr. Mayor.