Pre-Thanksgiving Good News
Tevi Troy ·
Nov 24, 2010 at 1:38pm
Nicole Gelinas has a piece in City Journal about the rebirth of a well-governed, manageable New Orleans, in which crime is down and the economy is improving. As someone who served in the Bush White House during Katrina and in the early stages of the rebuilding, I find this both encouraging and somewhat vindicating of our efforts. Real Clear Politics has chosen to highlight Nicole's piece on this Thanksgiving eve, and we can all be thankful for this bit of good news as we join friends and family for one of our most important and meaningful American holidays.
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May '10
Re: Pre-Thanksgiving Good News
That is a great piece and such unexpected good news. No surprise, however, that the turnaround is credited to a newly "energized populace". Here's the lesson for the rest of America:
"It turns out that instead of looking for a heroic potentate to work miracles from on high, New Orleanians were making smaller-scale, bottom-up changes that would truly help their city. Beginning in the same election, voters reshaped the city council: today, only one of the seven council members is a pre-Katrina holdover. More important is that the members’ résumés are subtly different from those of the old days. Fewer have community-organizing or social-services backgrounds; more have had careers in law, real estate, and management. These new members are likelier to view government as a provider of efficient public services than to consider it a weapon for social justice or a dispenser of jobs."
If it can happen in New Orleans it can happen anywhere.
May '10
Re: Pre-Thanksgiving Good News
What's so interesting is that Nagin was elected mayor to clean the place up after the classic spend and hire city employees Daley-machine-type good-old-boy ward heeler politics of one Moon Landrieu, and his successors, the Morials, who followed suit. If you thought the Bush family was a dynasty....