Who Will Rebuild New Orleans? Mayor Says No One From "Outside".

The Wall Street Journal reports today on the dispute on who will rebuild New Orleans now that as much as $200 billion in federal aid is available.  Naturally, federal, state and local officials all want a piece of the action.

What I found noteworthy was a quote from New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, who said “I don’t want anyone outside of New Orleans telling us how to plan this city.”

Is this guy for real?  I mean really. 

Mayor Nagin completely failed in his leadership during this crisis.  Many people in the black community are agreed that Nagin has abdicated any responsibility for the city’s almost complete lack of preparedness.  His local leadership failed dismally.  Now he wants to preach from his high horse?

Lots of folks have focused on why Nagin didn’t get people out of New Orleans on school buses instead of herding them into the Superdome.   Look at this exchange:

Appearing on NBC's "Dateline," Nagin was asked by host Stone Phillips: "What was mobilized? I mean were national guard troops in position. Were helicopters standing by? Were buses ready to take people away?"

"No. None of that," the Big Easy mayor replied."Why is that?" an incredulous Phillips asked.  Nagin replied: "I don't know. That is question for somebody else."

Before Katrina, New Orleans was a city with many problems: poverty, crime, a poor economy, substandard schools and public services — the list goes on and on. 

Mayor Nagin made a crucial mistake in dealing with hurricane Katrina by not being prepared and waiting too long before asking for help.  Instead of making the same mistakes twice, he’d do the citizens of New Orleans a service by keeping an open mind about outside ideas and taking help when it’s offered. 

Comments

[Aaron]

To be fair to Nagin, he evacuated everyone that *wanted* to evacuate before the storm. By the time the vast majority of the people came to the dome there was no time to drive them out of the city. If you look at all of the clips and news reports, you'll find that contraflow worked this time, and that 80% of a city of over 500,000 was evacuated. You cannot do better than that, and you cannot be prepared to evacuate 100% of that number of people, at least not without maximum funding from the state and federal government, which was not the case for either instance. I am not saying everything was done correctly, but he didn't fail for lack of trying, and what did happen was very successful.