September 14, 2005
New Orleans: Another View Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 08:10 AM EST I admit to finding John Steele Gordon’s comparison of New York on 9/11 and New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina baffling. Having shared space on the American Heritage masthead with John for several years, and having worked amicably with him on several of his fine pieces for the magazine, I’m sure he meant no real malice. He’s a true gentleman. But the suggestion that New Yorkers (or their city officials) handled catastrophe better than their counterparts in New Orleans is patently offensive and rests on a poor historical comparison. I’m a New Yorker and am fiercely proud of my city. I’ll happily concede that we have a better tradition of efficient and honest urban government than New Orleans. Simply put, there is no Fiorello La Guardia in recent Louisiana history. But these two catastrophes are not on the same scale. Except for the poor souls trapped in the Twin Towers or on board the doomed flights, or those who lived in the shadow of the World Trade Center, very few New Yorkers suffered the devastating loss of property, life or livelihood that New Orleanians are facing. The physical devastation of 9/11 was largely limited to the several blocks around the WTC. It had a real economic impact on the city, to be sure. But most of New Orleans has been wiped from the face of the map. Homes, schools, businesses, roads, bridges, highways, power plants—gone, and in a matter of minutes. There are some problems that are beyond the reach, capability, and responsibility of local governments. What happened to New Orleans is a prime example. What’s truly deplorable is the anemic federal response to so massive a regional disaster. Under the Bush administration, the Army Corps of Engineers has seen its project-based budget allocations decimated; FEMA, which functioned with considerable skill under the Clinton administration, was turned over to a third-rate partisan hack whose only “qualification” for heading up an important government agency—one that falls under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security—was his prior tenure with the International Arabian Horse Association; and the nation’s ability to address man-made or natural disasters has been sorely compromised by mounting budget deficits and a devolution of authority to cash-strapped state and local authorities. We are very much on a road back to the 1920s, when Americans apotheosized the private sector and stripped the federal state of the wherewithal to deal with national and regional catastrophes. See how well that worked out in 1929? I hope that New York is never faced with anything on the scale of what just happened in New Orleans. If we are, John Steele Gordon will surely find that even the Big Apple's leadership has its limits.
| 
