Caught between the devil and an incompetent boob

Some of you may be asking yourself, how did Ray Nagin become the mayor of New Orleans? It is obvious the man couldn't evacuate himself out of a paper bag let alone an entire city. The answer is simple - his opponent in the last election was David Duke. Yes - that David Duke - you remember, the guy with the sheet fetish, as in the KKK?

The good people of New Orleans were caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place - the devil you know or the incompetent boob you hope won't totally screw things up in the face of an overwhelming natural catastrophe and massive civil unrest. (Ooops! So much for wishful thinking!). Given the same choice I would have gleefully voted for a hamster over David Duke. A houseplant had a better chance of winning, "Phil O'Dendren for Mayor!"


Accepting the nomination for the Green Party and the next Mayor of New Orleans...

Unfortunately, and this is the very unfunny punch line to this cosmic joke, the people of New Orleans are now suffering and have a very, very long road ahead of them. So what does this tell us? More people should involve themselves in local politics? That would be a start... How about more qualified people should run for public office? Better.... But here's the best of all... More qualified people should run for public office and then once elected we as citizens should keep an eye on them and hold them accountable for what they do and what they don't do.

Nagin messed up but we can't blame the entire fiasco on his lack of leadership. The levees at best could not withstand more than a category 3 hurricane. This wasn't a secret and neither was the fact that if the levees broke New Orleans would fill up faster than a bar in Iowa City on two-for-one drink night. Everyone knew what the worst-case scenario was and yet no one did anything about it. Money poured in but nothing much was accomplished. Corruption went unchecked for decades. Whose fault was that? The politicians certainly but who should have held them responsible? I'm really not trying to pick on the people of New Orleans. Too often we all have the same "Play now, pay later" attitude. Not right now… It’s too expensive… We’ll take care of it next year… They just never thought the unthinkable would ever happen.

After the floods of 1993, Des Moines took action and improved levees around its water treatment plant and installed floodgates. Without the initial flood, it is doubtful these improvements would have been made. It usually takes a near miss or a close call for people to wise up. In Des Moines, we got off easy. So we flushed our toilets with buckets of water for 10 days, stinky but not fatal. The only casualty was personal hygiene not hundreds of people trapped in attics. Thankfully, our leaders saw the writing on the port-o-potty wall. They knew if nothing was done, the next time could be a lot worse. (Now if we could just get Davenport to trade in their sandbags for a flood levee...)

Would David Duke have made a better mayor? As a candidate he was unacceptable so we'll never know but that's not the point. The point is Nagin and all the others before him could have been held accountable long before Katrina, long before the levees broke. The Big Easy learned a hard lesson – keep ignoring the near misses and eventually the big one catches up with you.