All About Spin

Mary Landrieu and Ray Nagin need to talk to each other more.

Maybe if they did, the Louisiana Senator and New Orleans Mayor could ensure that they were both sticking to the same story the next time they are questioned about the failure of the Big Easy’s local government in dealing with the post-Katrina disaster. In dealing with one of the most heavily-publicized scandals coming out of the tragedy on the Mississippi – regarding the two-hundred plus school buses that were left unused to be swamped just over a mile from the Superdome – the excuses offered by the respective Delta country politicians fall short of jibing with one another.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday” this past weekend, Senator Landrieu was very clear on who was to blame for the unused buses, which could have transported thousands of citizens to safety before the catastrophic flooding began – President Bush was to blame.

As reported at Newsmax.com, the Senator stated, “Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane. And it’s because this administration and administrations before them do not understand the difficulties that mayors . . . face . . . In other words, this administration did not believe in mass transit.”

Leaving aside the fact that the buses in question were not used to get people to work – they were school buses that were, no doubt, used every day when the schools were operating – and leaving aside the fact that the difficulties of running normal transit routes on certain schedules has little to do with simply loading people up and transporting them to safety as soon as possible, it is interesting to note that the mayor himself has not used this line of reasoning to try to excuse the city’s failure in this regard. One would think that he would have trumpeted this long before the senator if this was the reason he didn’t utilize this unutilized resource – but he apparently didn’t get the memo with the talking points in time.

Rather, Mr. Nagin felt that the issue wasn’t his problem to begin with. When asked by NBC’s Stone Phillips why the buses weren’t ready to take people to “higher ground,” Mayor Nagin’s response was simple: “I don’t know. That is a question for somebody else . . . we tried to get as many people out as possible.” He didn’t bother to say how.

Apparently, the chief executive of the City of New Orleans isn’t a big adherent to that whole “The Buck Stops Here” mentality that most effective leaders feel compelled to live by. And it is interesting to note that, while he says the question of unused buses is a question for “somebody else,” two days after the levee broke he had acknowledged on a local radio station that he had been earlier advised that the school buses could be used, but that he insisted on getting Greyhounds to transport evacuees instead. Apparently, individual reading lights is an absolute must for passengers seeking to be taken out of harm’s way.

In any event, the differences in the stories being peddled by two of the highest-profile Louisianans in this debacle are worth noting. Of course the reason for the differing stories can most likely be explained by the fact that each person has a different purpose for offering their respective excuse. Mayor Nagin’s primary concern is to simply try to cover his posterior as the man who should have led the “first response” efforts. Senator Landrieu, on the other hand, primarily seems to see in this disaster an inviting opportunity to try to destroy the Bush administration, after her threat to punch the President didn't accomplish much.

In both cases, it seems that actually solving the problems following the catastrophe and helping its victims is a priority that has become subordinated to winning political and public relations battles. At this writing, it seems that only one high-profile leader has actually concerned himself less with politics and more with getting things accomplished. And that would be the very President who – rightly or wrongly – earlier today accepted responsibility for the problems in New Orleans as well as the responsibility for solving them.

This writer’s early perspective is that simply doing one’s job, and maybe the jobs of some others as well, will be the best public relations move of all for a real leader. Time will tell.