Morning Bell: Why Does Louisiana Think This is Obama’s Katrina?

Conn Carroll / August 30, 2010

President Barack Obama finished-up his 10-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard yesterday by flying down to New Orleans where he gave a speech at Xavier University marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The President specifically linked the 2005 disaster with the region’s most recent troubles telling the audience: “Even as you’ve been buffeted by Katrina and Rita, even as you’ve been impacted by the broader recession that has devastated communities across the country, in recent months the Gulf Coast has seen new hardship as a result of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.” Obama then rattled through all that has administration has done for the Gulf since the oil spill before concluding that the legacy of Katrina must be “not one of neglect, but of action; not one of indifference, but of empathy.”

But if the Obama administration has treated New Orleans with action and not neglect, with empathy and not indifference, then why does the latest survey from Public Policy Polling, a liberal polling firm, show that not only do Louisianans disapprove of Obama’s actions in the aftermath of the spill by a 61%-32% margin, but a majority, 54%, believe that President George W. Bush did the better job of helping Louisiana through Katrina? The answer was given by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) shortly after the President’s Xavier speech when Jindal told reporters: “The experts all agree, we can end this moratorium before six months. Let’s put our people back to work.” (more…)