The New Comeback Kid

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pulled it off. He saved his job, although why anybody in his right mind would want it is beyond me. New Orleans is a basket case. But then again, New Orleans has always been a basket case. It has exulted in its "basket casedness." But now things are fucked up, they are fucked up worse than Louisiana's pols could fuck things up even and they got fucked up on his watch. Bad luck for him. No, Nagin is not responsible for Katrina. And yes, it would appear that the poorest of the people could have been evacuated more effectively. But the truth of the matter is that the loss of life could have been staggering as opposed to just simply tragic and it was not. Who is to say that anyone else would have done appreciably better?

Nagin didn't build the levees, he wasn't in charge of FEMA and he didn't write the Louisiana Constitution. But he became the face of incompetent government even though no other elected official associated with this disaster has exactly covered themselves in glory. And he didn't help himself either with his intemperate remarks, and with his shameless pandering to the black voters. I say shameless because he pandered to the white vote the first time around. And indeed, he was thought of as a "Tom" by a fairly large segment of the black community. Nagin got filthy stinking rich in the cable business. He owns a minor league sports franchise. The mostly white business community put him office. Malcolm X he is not.

But the business community deserted him this election. The polls put him at a distant 3rd in the primary election. The money they gave him that put him in office the first go around went this time to Mitch Landreau whose daddy Moon was a former Mayor and whose sister is a United States Senator. The pundits said Nagin was toast. Ray came in first in the primary. He then, against all odds, kicked Landreau's ass in the general election.

This will be interesting indeed. Earl Long once said that "One of these days the people of Louisiana are gonna get good government. And they ain't gonna like it." What Uncle Earl meant-I guess- was that good government means making hard decisions. And Louisiana has never been about making hard decisions.

Our friends to the South no longer have that luxury. Imagine Louisiana as a grandfather clock. New Orleans is the pendulum. The clock will not work without its weighty appendage. Not only does Ray Nagin have to rebuild New Orleans, he has to do so with a constituency that is a soupcon of displaced black voters and a minority of white folks. He is no longer the mayor of a major city. He is the mayor of the French Quarter, the Central Business District, and Uptown. The rest is Hiroshima West.

The US Government has to deal with it. Louisiana has to deal with it.

And for better or worse, Ray Nagin is the face of that recovery effort.