A quick hypothetical: if a Democratic president had allowed, say, all of Connecticut to flood and done nothing but strum a guitar and look out the window while it happened, do you think that might, maybe, feature prominently in the Republican attacks during the next presidential year?

I ask this because as I sat at a surprisingly interesting Katrina roundtable yesterday, it occurred to me that Katrina has been astoundingly, shockingly absent from the convention. And Sen. Mary Landrieu's comments during the event gave me a bit of a window into why.

The event was organized by Oxfam, moderated by Ted Koppel and featured Landrieu, Douglas Brinkley along with a variety of Gulf Coast community activists. When Koppel asked Landrieu how she'd sum up what's gone wrong with the recovery, she said that there was an "abject failure to explain to the American people that poor people were hurt, but so were middle class families and rich people. It was a staggering loss to everyone. It was an equal opportunity destroyer."

Well, um, no. It wasn't. As odious as I found her contention, however, by the end of the event I understood the politics of it. In the American consciousness, Katrina victims have come to be viewed as a charity case, worthy, at the most, of pity. And the entire Gulf Coast has been transformed into something of a regional welfare queen. Which means the money, not surprisingly, has dried up. For local, community-based rebuilding Louisiana has gotten a paltry $10 billion from the federal government, or about the cost of one month of our occupation in Iraq. And you could see from everyone on the panel they are terrified and depressed that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of will in the rest of the country to commit the resources necessary. "People ask, 'why should we even rebuild this city?'" said James Perry, who run the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, "'Why is it important to me?'And the answer is because we are an American city."

That's, of course, true. But what Katrina unmasked was and is, in some ways, so raw, so necessarily radicalizing that the Democratic party doesn't quite know what to do with it.

Comments (12)

1. What was the figure? $10 billion for an American city?

   That's LESS THAN A MONTH...in Iraq!

   Posted by Maskdelta at 08/27/2008 @ 2:21pm

2. Yeah, why rebuild a city full of welfare cases when you've got a perfectly good war to fight!

   Remember: "Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist...9/11, 9/11, 9/11...kill, grrrr, kil"

   Posted by leftofcenter at 08/27/2008 @ 4:05pm

3. Obama should use the clips of McCain and Bush celebrating his birthday as people died in New Orleans. McCain's obsession with the Iraw surge didn't apply to the storm surge that killed Americans. NOR was he interested in helping the Katrina victims after the storm.

   Posted by lindabahlman at 08/27/2008 @ 6:03pm

4. Here comes Gustav! Right on schedule for the Republican convention.

   Posted by Stevebremne at 08/27/2008 @ 6:30pm

5. Hmm. Funny to me that the our local righties are more in favor of spending money to build up Iraq than spending money to build up an American city. Why do you care more about Baghdad than New Orleans? Why do you hate America?

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 08/27/2008 @ 7:11pm

6. Posted by 2HAPPY at 08/27/2008 @ 4:54pm

   $50 billion?!?!?!?

   Wow....that's almost FOUR months in Iraq!

   Posted by Maskdelta at 08/27/2008 @ 7:54pm

7. I am a Louisiana resident so bear with me. LOL

   New Orleans is BELOW sea level. Why should we pump BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS into an are that is BELOW sea level?

   I am sick and tired of this crap! New Orleans is BELOW sea level and it is about to get WHACKED again by Gustave. Quit pumping BILLIONS INTO A TOILET BOWL PLEASE! It is true that New Orleans was and still is riddled with poverty. Just a microcosm of liberalism gone awry.

   Posted by NotMeNoWay at 08/27/2008 @ 10:12pm

8. n.o. is a dumb place for a city.

   not as dumb as las vegas, though.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2008 @ 10:29pm

9. Leaving Katrina out of the convention......

   Great idea.

   This country will swallow most anything, but blaming a hurricane on a president is silly.

   The thing we learned from Katrina is when Ray Nagin says GET OUT, he means GET OUT!

   Posted by bleedingheart at 08/28/2008 @ 08:20am

10. The question is, how long would it take to make New Orleans impervious to another hurricane and what would happen to NO if a hurricane hit during the process? The fact is that when Katrina hit, NO was never going to be the same. With global warming and increased sea levels and more hurricanes, trying to rebuild NO is probably impossible.

    Posted by tgpaul at 08/28/2008 @ 11:21am

11. I don't think the problem is that New Orleans is below sea level. After all, the Netherlands proves you can have virtually an entire country below sea level and still engineer saftey. Nor is the problems "liberalism gone awry. The problem was and remains a government dedicated to the proposition that all chaos is created equal and people are to serve that. Tell me that we can land men on the moon and bring them home and then explain to me why we CANT rebuild a city in America. We can send billions overseas to rebuild victims of floods earthquakes and famines, but not an American city? Also, this is not a first for the Bush family. Limon Colorado was destroyed by a massive tornado shortly after a major earthquake hit Iran. Bush I sent Iran a great deal of aid, but refused to declare Limon a federal disaster, which only would have made low cost loans available. I see a pattern.

    Posted by tim4change at 08/28/2008 @ 12:08pm

12. Posted by bleedingheart at 08/28/2008 @ 08:20am

    And don't hire and Arabian Horse guy to run FEMA.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 08/28/2008 @ 12:13pm