This positive essay on Mayor Nagin is an updated repost from a comment I made in Thomas C's Newsweek Castrates Bush diary, but after sleeping on it I thought it deserved its own space for discussion. I've enhanced it a bit with more hotlinks in the text which serve as a basis for what I wrote.
Getting lost in the right-wingers' self-serving Not The Blame Game, Home VersionTM is the fact that Nagin retained command and control throughout the entire disaster, from the moment Katrina hit the warmer than normal Gulf waters and sped up all the way til landfall to the crucial, and excruciating, days afterward.
Nagin never 'gave up' or started 'playing games'. He led and did the maximum possible under crushing conditions.
The conservative meme (and it's more powerful than a lot of us realize) is that "Nagin is no Giuliani."
BS. Pure, unadulterated bullshit.
more under the fold...
Nagin kept the Crescent City's first responders going and kept as much order as he could given the overwhelming situation. Giuliani's New York City did not have warning and lost several thousand people nearly instantly (including many hundreds of first responders) but the area of devastation was limited to a few city blocks and was easily cordoned off.
Nagin had warning, yes, and he got as many people out as he could by issuing an emergency and mandatory evacuation, using as many busses as he was able in order to evac those who couldn't transport themselves (and didn't want to "ride it out"), and generally getting the city as prepared as possible. But 80% of New Orleans was flooded within a few hours; the worst case scenario came to fruition. Those who had stayed, by free will or lack of mobility, had gathered in emergency shelter areas or were able to boat or swim to them relatively soon after the flooding began.
The local first responders were nearly instantaniously overwhelmed yet any looting foraging, violence or mayhem was limited and, as we now know, was not anywhere near as bad as the media (mainstream and right-wing) initially made it out to be in their circle-jerk of repeating 'what they've heard' rather than reporting 'what they know to be true'.
And it turns out in those phone calls and spur of the moment meetings it was Nagin, as a mayor, who was ordering his state's governor and his nation's commander-in-chief to simply do their jobs, because his forces were clearly overwhelmed.
Stop focussing on the damn school bus picture.
Stop focussing on the damn looting foraging picture.
Stop focussing on the damn unverified urban legends of lawlessness at the Superdome and Convention Center and the non-existant shots fired at helicopters.
Those are the details that conservatives Bushies want Americans, and progressives in particular, to focus on so they don't realize the big picture.
Bush failed -- miserably, totally and completely. He allowed New Orleans to drown through inaction in the years prior to the hurricane (from Corps budget cuts to softened regulations on development) and through inaction in the crucial hours and days after landfall.
Bush failed -- that, and nothing else, is the big picture. In his own words, Bush's efforts were "totally unacceptable." And, yes, he was talking about his own staff's efforts when he uttered those words.
Nagin is being made into a scapegoat to be burned at the stake so criticism of Bush can be muddied and deflected. Dire predictions of 10,000 dead may or may not prove true, only time will tell. Current recoveries of the dead are proving to be lower than expected which, to a degree, shows that Nagin did his job of protecting and leading his city before and during a time of crisis.
Nagin, though nowhere near perfect (no one is), is a hero for New Orleans. He followed a flawed plan (a plan that was devised, coordinated and agreed upon by the city, the state and FEMA all working together) to the best of his ability and then led his first responders' forces as they tried to do the impossible while the promised 'cavalry' sat idle.
Conservatives are right, but for the wrong reason. Nagin is no Giuliani -- he's better. He did more against worse odds and with less help.
We must counter the right-wingers' blame game by praising Nagin's accomplishments. It may have been much worse had he not shown the leadership and poise he did.
Giuliani is discussed as a darkhorse GOP presidential candidate; why not Nagin for the Dems (OK, yes, he flipped from the GOPs, but you get my point)? If only the New York City-based news media didn't lap at the milk bowl of conservativism Mayor Nagin would be earning the praise and accolades showered upon the NYFD-hatted mayor of New York City in 2001.
He deserves no less. In fact, he deserves much better, all the way around.
How did I reach these conclusions? By reading between the lines of what really happened because the media, mainlining conservative talking points and snorting right-wing punditry, won't ever recognize the obvious for what it is -- Nagin's a hero and a leader who was overwhelmed while his governor appeared to dither indecisively and his president played country star and ate his senator's birthday cake:
Katrina Timeline
ThinkProgress.org
Blueprint for disaster
Chicago Tribune
Urban Legends surrounding Katrina
Snopes.com
EDITORIAL: Suffering and semantics
The Times-Picayune
Friday, September 09, 2005