New Orleans re-elected incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin in a close runoff election this past Saturday. Despite some of the criticism and controversy leveled at him during the ongoing hurricane Katrina disaster and the response fiasco that followed it, his re-election not only seems important, but the right thing.
For one thing, as Mayor Ray Nagin pointed out in his dignified and generous victory acceptance speech, in many ways, Nagin at least for the past year, has been a politician subject to a similar brand of vilification and butt of jokes as President George W. Bush. The comparison is apt ---- like Bush, Nagin suffers from a tendency of the public - particularly those watching TV sound-bytes vs reading the more detailed accounts in print - to seek to `blame and scapegoat' the one on top for everything under the sun. A marked tendency to believe the worst characterizations in search of a simple and satisfyingly short answer that can `fit before commercial break'. This in complete disregard of whether the one `on top' even has the authority and jurisdiction to so act. In truth, such moments of crisis provide a valuable insight into the true limits of power and authority, and one might dare posit, suggest in just what areas those powers and authority maybe should be increased or augmented to meet public expectations already de-facto in place. (Example, that FEMA was more administrative in character, is not the public perception of what it was `supposed to be'. Ergo, it needs to become what it was thought to be). A similar insight is found when looking at what the New Orleans clean-up has to really deal with.
First off, the national public dis-information and overall clue-lessness of the sheer magnitude of what happened is very great. (This writer was not excepted from that number -- what I will discuss next was truly shocking to watch). The following elaborate graphic of the unfolding of exactly what happened during those wild hours Hurricane Katrina made landfall tells more eloquently than reports just how big a deal this was. That it overtaxed the experience of any municipal government, and even a state's, in the variety of a challenges posed comes as no surprise.
http://www.nola.com/katrina/graphics/flashflood.swf
If you visited the link, you will see that the winds and storm surges combined, had the effect of `launching' multiple and ever-shifting assaults on the various flanks of New Orleans. Like an enemy army besieging a great city seeking a weakness in its defense, Katrina's effects seemed to show a similar diabolical cunning and changing of tactics. As a historian with eye for detail, I found the actual facts here truly daunting, and yes, in retrospect, somewhat exculpatory in character, toward all levels of the initial government response. I had originally believed there had been a failure of levees on the north shore facing Lake Pontchartrain, with spillover from the Industrial Canal that flooded the 9th Ward and St.Bernard area, coupled with an unlucky breach of the 17th Street Canal, and a bit of water in the French Quarter. This impression itself, more detailed than some descriptions often heard on radio, was still woefully incomplete and far short of the truth. It is when viewing this graphic that one can truly appreciate that what happened was far more. This Hurricane's strength, matched to the peculiar topography of just where it hit, unleashed what in the I/T business is recognized as a cascading series of events.
A similar over-simplification presently stands about the recovery and rebuilding efforts, and what hurdles are faced. Unfortunately, there is not yet a similarly clear account and presenting of the facts of what is involved like the prior graphic does for the storm's strike. Yet enough is implicit from learning what happened and what is going on now to know this: The drama of the New Orleans recovery is in part an internal affair, which though requiring close supervision of how Federal funds and assistance is used, is also a recovery whose details and pitfalls and challenges are known and best left to the residents of NOLA. Off-cuff judgments from outside are not helpful and are demeaning. For example, there has been wild talk about "neglect in the clean-up" without taking any account of how much the Mayor and officials have had their progress and attempts stymied by legal hassles of property ownership or various other pitfalls, that have not yielded even to the extraordinary and obvious circumstances of disaster. Even wrecked cars and houses, which would be normally cleared away after a disaster, are often impossible to move due to legal entanglements of a kind that not as common in prior decades of disaster. Such tomfoolery hampers efforts of the city to reconstruct. Then of course, seeing the true scale of the damage there, and the Mississippi Gulf coast, as my brother did recently, goes a long way to explaining any `lag' in reconstruction.
What this means is, that like the conditions during Katrina itself, the facts behind the hype and the hit-and-run style coverage of TV at present show that the picture is not one so much of gross incompetence, as it is a story of overlapping and conflicting agencies and interests. Because of this, it is a sterling example and re-teaching of an old lesson: the overriding importance and need to have a unified chain of authority with a discernible and accountable capstone. A person where the "buck" can stop. Its all too easy for the sound-byte coverage to overlook that Mayor Nagain does not have such authority, and indeed, no one does. For this reason, navigating the labyrinth of legal and jurisdictional hassles ranging from the sound to the patently absurd will be difficult in the recovery. But a certain momentum is now in the air, and I have little doubt now that New Orleans will return, and is returning.
One of the hurdles to be passed was the distraction that the election campaign necessarily generated. For a variety of reasons, for purposes of morale and continuity, before the election I was of the view that Mayor Nagin should be given a chance as Mayor Guiliani was, to continue to lead his stricken city and provide a bridge of continuity to its road to recovery. Such continuity would also help stave-off a simplistic `scape goat' response that would distract from the fact that the failures in dealing with Katrina were shared by all levels of government, at the state level and federal, and its lessons to be learned by all. The growing tendency to just blame the city was unsound. As the experience of neighboring Mississippi shows, neglect and inertia by confused federal elements was not just a New Orleans phenomena. It would seem given the verdict after a close election, and then a hotly contested run-off, a discernible majority of NOLA residents agreed.
Mayor Nagin has had to bear a great deal of simplistic blame for forces and procedures to a great extent out of his control or unanticipated. Having gone through the crucible and learned its lessons, its right that he be given a chance to apply them and offer both city and nation a point of clear continuity pre-Katrina to post-Katrina; such continuity points can be vital to regaining and reviving momentum after a big loss. Helps to combat the impression of `ending' vs making a `new start'. President Bush has pledged the necessary impetus, and it remains to be seen if New Orleans is, as Mayor Nagin put it, "ready to take off" again. One prays so, and though optimism may seem out of place here, there is an intuition he is right.
- Anthony
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I thought this was a timely commentary on this subject, if c/p is allowed. It's from the New Orleans Times Picayune.
http://www.nola.com/
news/t-p/grace/index.ssf?/
base/news-0/1148380309213580.xml
Outsiders baffled by Nagin's appeal
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Stephanie Grace
Whenever I've left town in the months since Katrina, wherever I've traveled, people have asked the same question: "What on earth is with your mayor?
It happened after that first week, when Ray Nagin's profanity-laced plea for help made national news. And it happened a whole lot more after the infamous January "chocolate city" diatribe made him the butt of late-night jokesters everywhere.
Here's what I tell them: "If you met him, you'd like him. If you sat down to talk with him, you'd come away impressed."
After they look at me skeptically, I usually throw in an "I swear."
Next, invariably, comes a history lesson.
I mention the moment he announced a new era in shoot-from-the-hip political discourse by promising not just to take a new approach to the city-owned Armstrong International Airport, but to "sell that sucker." I describe his loose-limbed walk; the sly, relaxed tone in his voice; the gleam in his eye and the wicked grin when he announces that he's about to throw away the script.
I tell them about his fondness for hip-hop vernacular. I haven't exhaustively researched the subject, but I'm pretty sure Nagin's the only New Orleans mayor to ever use term "bling-bling" in a state of the city address.
I explain that beneath all of that lies a charming, creative, savvy, often impetuous operator who doesn't think like a politician, often to his detriment. But that doesn't mean he doesn't think.
And if that doesn't work, I revert to an old standby. "It's a New Orleans thing," I tell them. "You wouldn't understand."
In fact, that's pretty much the way Nagin himself put it, when a reporter suggested that the outside world was shocked at his victory.
"I just think they don't get it," Nagin said Sunday. "They don't get the uniqueness of New Orleans. They don't really get what really happened during Katrina . . . And they really don't get Ray Nagin. Sometimes I don't get Ray Nagin, so it's all right."
We'll leave that last part alone for now, but the rest of it rings true.
If New Orleans is unique, it's in part because the city breeds and values its larger-than-life characters, and Nagin is certainly one of those. As for those who bash Nagin for how he handled himself during the catastrophe, Saturday's results show that most voters understand that there wasn't much anyone could have done.
As for "getting" Ray Nagin, you have to admit, those who see a one-dimensional, cartoonish figure really don't.
The majority who voted to re-elect him see someone who kept his cool and held on to his trademark optimism through unbelievably trying circumstances. They see someone who still has lots of ideas, and who promises to do a better job of following through. And I'm betting that, on closer inspection, they see that even the unfortunate "chocolate city" comment made sense, in context. Here was a man who was reacting -- OK, overreacting -- to genuine fear that some New Orleanians weren't welcome back. It was pandering, pure and simple, and it was awkward because he's not a natural panderer.
In fact, when Nagin finally went to largely white Lakeview to apologize, he talked about how his early administration was so colorblind that he got attacked as a "white man in black skin." The audience nodded, because they knew it was true. From then on, far more of the local complaints over Nagin's comments focused not on the mayor's intent, but on how his comments were perceived in Washington and around the country.
In short, having taken full measure of the man, more than half the voters in this city decided they're willing to trust him with their future.
Before they scoff, people who don't live here might try to walk a mile in those voters' shoes.
Poster Psych's quotes of the New Orleans Times Picayune article on Nagin's election is useful and goes far to confirm both the intuition and accuracy of my initial post.
Namely, that nationally Ray Nagin's reputation and impression is subject to a reflexive distortion that takes little account of the true facts or political conditions in the city before Hurricane Katrina, and the circumstances of his election.
It also gives an insight on the `balancing' act between various voting blocks that are so necessary for a municipal official, and yet if quoted out of context can look devastatingly bigoted, for example, Ms Grace writes:
"And I'm betting that, on closer inspection, they see that even the unfortunate "chocolate city" comment made sense, in context. Here was a man who was reacting -- OK, overreacting -- to genuine fear that some New Orleanians weren't welcome back. It was pandering, pure and simple, and it was awkward because he's not a natural panderer.
In fact, when Nagin finally went to largely white Lakeview to apologize, he talked about how his early administration was so colorblind that he got attacked as a "white man in black skin."
I note to be identified as NOT a "natural panderer" might well be taken as a compliment of the highest order! It finds further elaboration here:
"The majority who voted to re-elect him see someone who kept his cool and held on to his trademark optimism through unbelievably trying circumstances. They see someone who still has lots of ideas, and who promises to do a better job of following through."
That is precisely the impression given to this blogger, as an outsider, when watching Nagin's more complete speeches and reading about what contending with. As I pointed out, the feeling that he genuinely cares, and will and is trying, is gained. That's worth alot in this decade's exceedingly partisan and self-serving politics. Worth gambling on being given a second chance. Because there is one thing New Orleans certainly doesn't need at this time, and this is a typical political panderer. That is clearly what the voters concluded.
"From then on, far more of the local complaints over Nagin's comments focused not on the mayor's intent, but on how his comments were perceived in Washington and around the country."
And rightly so, for there is a marked superficiality and stereotyping in the style and timing of the reportage of the politics there. However, this is probably due more to a certain research laziness than any malicious intent of newsrooms far away. Press emphasis and clarification of the true backstory before a major event is notoriously wanting in most cases. This results in a tendency to seize upon the simplest descriptions and insinuations, and what will best fit into a few seconds of air time while leaving the viewer provoked and interested for the ads that follow. The characterizations of Mayor Nagin's challenges has proved no exception.
"In short, having taken full measure of the man, more than half the voters in this city decided they're willing to trust him with their future.
Before they scoff, people who don't live here might try to walk a mile in those voters' shoes."
Starting to do that, of becoming informed about the appalling conditions still existing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans, and which entities were and are truly the least helpful or decisive in its aftermath, is the best way to begin. It really seems that Ray Nagin has unfairly been named as one.
- Anthony
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