The Long Shadow of Huey Long's Paternalism
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Have a look at this review in The Daily Howler of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's ridiculous performance in her interview with FOX News' Chris Wallace yesterday. The problem, it appears, is that Landrieu is toeing the party line:

I am not going to level criticism at local and state officials. Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane. And it's because this administration and administrations before them do not understand the difficulties that mayors, whether they are in Orlando, Miami, or New Orleans, face.

One of the most important ---if undiscussed--- developments in this whole story is the reversal of polarity between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of Federalism, now in the 21st Century. Today's Democrats can't seem to decide when states' rights are in effect and when they are not. If Bush had gone into Louisiana and Federalized that state's Guard over the governor's objections, all we would have now are stories of Bush the Dictator. But Bush simply pleaded with the governor to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans because that is a reasonable step in a system like ours where the local and state governments are expected to exercise authority. There were the usual systems in place to act to help, but bureaucratic blunders that began at the local level stopped those processes dead in their tracks. And that includes not moving hundreds of city buses into immediate service as detailed in the plans that the City of New Orleans has had on hand for years! If you can't admit that, well, then, you must be Mary Landrieu (emphases mine):

WALLACE: But Senator, there were hundreds of buses sitting in that parking lot. Can I just ask the question?

LANDRIEU: You can, but let me finish, if I could, please.

WALLACE: Well, look in the picture here. There were hundreds of buses in parking lots. The city and the state—

LANDRIEU: That is underwater. Those—

WALLACE: It wasn't underwater before the—

LANDRIEU: Those buses were underwater. Those buses—

WALLACE: They weren't underwater on Saturday. They weren't underwater on Sunday.

LANDRIEU: We had two catastrophes. We had a hurricane and then we had a levee break. When the levee broke, not only did New Orleans go underwater, but St. Bernard when underwater and St. Tammany Parish went underwater.

WALLACE: But they weren't underwater on Sunday.

LANDRIEU: And Plaquemines went underwater. And because the mayor evacuated the city, we had the best evacuation between Haley Barbour and Kathleen Blanco of any evacuation I've seen. I'm 50 years old; I've never seen one any better.

WALLACE: But there were a hundred thousand people left in the city.

LANDRIEU: They did a hundred thousand people left in the city because this federal government won't support cities to evacuate people, whether it's from earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes. And that's the truth. And that will come out in the hearing.

What? That's not just grammatical gibberish, either. The Federal government has to tell the mayor of New Orleans to gas up his own fleet of fucking buses and put them on the streets to transport as many people as possible out of the flood-prone areas of the city? That's silly. Ray Nagin should have done that on his own.

I don't know what happened, but Landrieu is full of crap. And I don't even care that she's very cute. She's just wrong about this.