Levees Not War

Maybe he wished he’d planned to stay longer, though there may have been a point when he began to wish he hadn’t come at all. President Obama’s visit was criticized days in advance even by supporters for being too short. The advance team added a quick trip to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School in the Lower Ninth Ward—which thrilled the school but was criticized as a drive-by photo-op. The city has had enough of that kind of presidential attention.

For the most part, the town hall crowd at UNO was raucously friendly to the president (though they embarrassed him somewhat by booing his hosts Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mayor Ray Nagin). “This is a feisty crowd here,” he observed. And the president, to his credit—and perhaps as a defensive, damage-control measure—brought along DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, HUD secretary Shaun Donovan, education secretary Arne Duncan, and, important for coastal restoration, Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. All were welcome.

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