Citizens hardly seem to mind that Gov. Bobby Jindal travels a lot to other states, so long as he is home for the hurricanes. Political leaders, of course, are expected to be front and center for emergencies, for those are the times that the people really do want to see them. First responders performed heroically during and after Hurricane Isaac, while government agencies and officials did what they were supposed to do, which is more than they have in past disasters. At his televised briefings, the governor’s rapid-fire reading of the number of Humvees mobilized and bottles of water delivered was numbing to follow but reassuring as well. Not on camera, he went into St. John the Baptist Parish at the peak of the hurricane, where he came upon hundreds of flooded-out residents holed up in a church, and ordered their evacuation to shelters. A favorite whipping boy of past storms, the Army Corps of Engineers was roundly praised for the performance of its $14 billion in levee improvements around New Orleans, though U.S. Sen. David Vitter wants an investigation of whether that caused unusual flooding outside the protected areas. Less heralded, but deserving recognition, is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which this time lived up to its full name, rather than the four-letter word FEMA, normally uttered with contempt. That its name came up so little is evidence that it got its job done, quietly but reliably behind the scenes. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
