Published in Aspenia Journal Of The Aspen Institute Italia 2005
Way down yonder in New Orleans,
In the land of dreamy dreams,
There's a garden of Eden,
If you know what I mean...
"There's only one thing as powerful as the Mississippi River," Abraham Lincoln once told a visitor from Britain, "and that's the London Times." The Times may have faded under the aura of Rupert Murdoch, but the Mississippi River goes on, still a force, but a force with which governments sometimes forget, to their regret, to reckon. The same could be said of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain.
It was along the east bank of the Mississippi, about 107 miles from the mouth, on high ground, deceptively seductive, that Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, the French governor of Louisiana, founded the city of New Orleans and named it for the regent back in Paris. That was in 1718, or so it is generally believed. Since then, under the flag of Spain as well as France, and finally of the United States, new Orleans has suffered fires, floods, hurricanes, yellow fever and cholera as well as the ravages of the Civil War. It also was the site of Andrew Jackson's great victory over the British in the War of 1812, a needless encounter since peace already had been signed, but glorious nonetheless.
New Orleans has been home to writers such as Walker Percy and Frances Parkinson Keyes, whose lesser but much loved novel, Dinner at Antoine's, celebrated a great restaurant matched only by Galatoire's. The Big Easy has harbored jazz at Preservation Hall and a wicked drink called the Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's where two women, perhaps three hundred pounds each, at two pianos used to belt out "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey," and maybe still do. The Crescent City also welcomed French painter Edgar Degas in 1872 for a stay with the American branch of his family. Politics were dicey then, but what else is new?
The truth is New Orleans has offered to countless eager pilgrims blessed relief from the Puritanical conscience that grips much of America. Now the favorite of evangelicals, President George W. Bush, is striving to recover the good opinion of many in his own Republican Party after his inexplicable flight to a speech in San Diego just as water was rampaging through a breach in the levees to devour New Orleans, drenching the city with a surging soup of E. Coli bacteria and lead. What happened to the president that day? Where were his famous political instincts? (Every county judge knows that when a crisis erupts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama you don't head for California.) What happened to the compassion so often touted by advisor Karen Hughes, now head of public diplomacy for the State Department?
My guess, drawing on a friend's observations, is that the president, like many successfully recovered alcoholics, relies on a strict structure to maintain himself: a regular schedule for going to bed, getting up, exercising, etc. He also needs to stick to his plans, without variation. Then he feels safe. Hence the psychological necessity of San Diego.
But why did he merely fly over the devastation on August 31 instead of stopping to help however he could? That visit would wait until September 2, four days after catastrophe struck. It's mystifying, unless it simply took that long to change gears in his mind and commit to a new plan that then would undergird his structural soundness.
Whatever the reasons, it must be admitted that George W. Bush is the unluckiest president since Jimmy Carter. It also is clear that the Bush domestic program is in shambles, blown to bits by Hurricane Katrina. Abolishing the estate tax, due for discussion right after Labor Day, must wait until next year when bi-elections may make agreement even harder to accomplish. The last chance will come in 2007, before the race for president consumes the country. Social Security reform was all but dead before the winds of August. Resuscitation now seems even more unlikely.
Katrina also has brought terrifying clarity to a couple of issues the administration has preferred to ignore. One is the consumption and conservation of oil and gas, as well as the development of new sources of energy. This now is inescapable, not only because of intractable trouble in the Middle East and Venezuela but because of the havoc wreaked by the hurricane which, according to press reports, shut down "six refineries and four natural gas processing plants" on the Gulf coat, the nation's "largest energy hub," and left "hundreds of rigs and production platforms" deserted. It could happen again.
The industry has restored about 60 percent of its "off-shore oil and gas production" in the area, but refineries will take much longer to reactivate. Moreover, profit margins for new facilities are not high and environmental regulations can be forbidding. Hence the last new refinery was built almost 30 years ago and only one is in the works at the moment. Meanwhile, prices for "gasoline, heating oil, diesel and jet fuel" remain unacceptably high. Energy shortages may well arrive with the winter since processing of gulf coast natural gas may not resume for six months. Whether the president and the Congress like it or not, conservation of petroleum cannot be avoided. Dramatic gains were made in the Carter years in fuel efficiency of cars and buildings. There's no reason why this cannot be accomplished once more.
The other crucial question that accompanied Katrina is global warming. It too will insert itself into the center of public anxiety even though George W. Bush is reluctant to accept the science. So is Vice President Dick Cheney, who some say may try for the White House himself three years from now and keep the Oval Office in hand for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2012. None of them can be allowed to hide from the implications of global warming. There is no proof that this was the cause of Katrina, but credible reports have shown that climate change is likely to bring far more hurricanes of greater severity, reaching inland with a ferocity to shock people of the plains who thought they were safe from the savagery of the sea. No tampering with the science will alter the imperatives of global warming. If the current president and Congress do not face up to the danger, the next government will be unable to evade it.
One industry with an acute interest in climate change is insurance. The Financial Times cited a report that found a "15-fold increase in insured losses from. . . severe weather in the past 30 years. Insured losses stood at "$45 billion globally in 2004, while total property losses. . . were $107 billion." The insurance costs of Katrina could "far exceed those figures," even though one estimate says that only about 20 percent of the homes damaged in the hurricane were covered for flooding.
Many will argue that their houses were destroyed by wind for which they were insured, not water, but it will mean great hardship for most of the people trying to rebuild their homes. Congressional action may be sought, and found, further worsening the federal deficit which may have to withstand expenditures for the Gulf coast of more than $100 billion. And this may grow worse as zooming construction costs bring project after project to a sobering assessment, not only in New Orleans, but all over the country.
The greatest crisis of all, however, is the shattered confidence in the United States government. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich observed, "UPS [United Parcel Service] works. Fed Ex works. ATM's [Automatic Teller Machines ] work. Government does not work." Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, added, "Anti-government conservatism makes no sense. " In Iraq, he said, in the Gulf of Mexico, we are seeing incompetence.
Competence is the question. Exhausted by blunders in Baghdad, at Abu Graib, at Guantanamo, in the intelligence community, Americans have had to endure a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] run at the top by political hacks. Michael Brown ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president told him) has been dispatched back to Washington where he no longer can botch the operation in the gulf, but Michael Chertoff, without much more to recommend him except that he was a judge instead of head of a horse association, remains at the helm of the Homeland Defense Department. Like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he apparently was waiting for the "first responders" in New Orleans to act before doing anything else, oblivious to the desperate straits in which they were wading.
The New York Times charted Chertoff's week of Katrina like this: "Saturday, August 27: nothing; Sunday, August 28: participates in a daily video teleconference on the approaching hurricane; Monday, August 29: monitors the impact of the storm; Tuesday, August 30: declares an 'incident of national significance' and activates the National Response Plan; Wednesday, August 31: holds a news conference, says he is 'extremely pleased with the response' of the federal government; Thursday, September 1: starts National Preparedness Month. Holds a second news conference; Friday, September 2: nothing; Saturday, September 3: nothing; Sunday, September 4: appears on Sunday talk shows to give status reports; Monday, September 5: nothing." And this is the guy to defend America in a terrorist attack? He personifies the fundamental fear that lurks in the wake of Katrina: how will the government respond to bad trouble like that?
Michael Brown was replaced in the trenches of New Orleans by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen. It's clear that leaders with military experience are the best equipped to head Homeland Defense and FEMA. They know how to act quickly and not leave mayors such as Ray Nagin stranded in the Superdome and the Hyatt with no phone, expecting him and Gov. Kathleen Blanco to lead the battle for survival. (A week after the deluge, Nagin was looking for a house in Farmer's Branch, a suburb of Dallas, near his wife's sister, and enrolling his child in a Catholic school. He seemed utterly defeated by New Orleans.) Will military officers take over the DHD and FEMA? I hope so. Surely President Bush knows from his training at Harvard Business School that a manager must be judged by his results.
What resulted from the New Orleans flood of 1927 was an exodus of badly treated blacks from the city, the rise to the White House of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who led the federal response with decisive (author John Barry said "ruthless") expertise and the emergence also of Huey Long as a populist governor of Louisiana. Prodding Franklin Delano Roosevelt into a full embrace of the New Deal, Long, said one report, "raised taxes on the rich and massively increased spending on public works."
The same could lie ahead now, even in a tax-cutting administration, as George W. Bush, flanked on September 1 by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, struggles to escape, in Iraq and now New Orleans, the loss of public trust that afflicted another Texas leader, Lyndon B. Johnson.
While Bush wrestles with the lions in his own peculiar den, Dallas, Houston and other cities, so quick to help, will vie for the assets of New Orleans -- the companies, the music, the restaurants. But they'll never appropriate the charm or replicate the magic. Those will float free, waiting to return to the bayou.
Do you know what it means
To miss New Orleans,
To miss it each night and day?
Miss the moss-covered vines,
The feelings getting stronger
The longer I stay away...
