The Larry Kane Report

Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, is suffering from foot in mouth disease, which is probably disturbing the thousands of residents of the Big Easy who helped return him to office.

First, he sounded off in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, portions of which were broadcast a few days ago. I watched segments of that interview, and his entire interview on Meet The Press, which was partially an answer to the 60 Minutes controversy.

Nagin is perhaps the most defensive politician currently serving in this country. The glare of the limelight seems to motivate and excite him and that’s why he has to constantly make amends for his words.

In this most recent example, the Mayor chided New York City for taking so long to fill the “hole in the ground,” referring to the what’s left of the World Trade Center. This is part of the Nagin pattern. First he turns the spotlight off of his own administration’s many failures, including the inability to at least provide decent drinking water to New Orleans’s citizens a year after the tragedy.

During the Meet the Press interview, the Mayor said he was sorry for calling it a “hole in the ground” and should have called it an “undeveloped site.” He never fully apologized for insulting New Yorkers, but he did say he was sorry for the victims there.

In all the interviews. Mayor Nagin is a classic buck passer, referring to failures of the state and federal governments. His statement of failures is right on target. But he spends little time explaining how 45 percent of his city’s population is still displaced, or how things have moved quickly for hotels and casinos when so many people are still in the same condition they were a year ago.

If there is one thing we have learned from Katrina a year later it is that big government doesn’t do a good job serving the people. Big government in Washington, Baton Rouge and the city of New Orleans has failed. While big government falters, big mouths have hardly contributed to the suffering of the poor in Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast. Officials like Mayor Nagin, the fired FEMA boss Michael Brown, some officials of the Bush administration and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana have spent almost an entire year playing the blame game. There is plenty of blame to go around, but I think we have heard enough.

If the Mayor speaks for his citizens, then the people of New Orleans, already battered by the force of nature, must feel betrayed.

A year later, the rhetoric seems hollow.

I can’t imagine the suffering. But I feel for the thousands who are still waiting for direct action that will improve the quality of their lives.

With the needs of those people in mind, Mayor Nagin needs all the friends he can get as he represents New Orleans during a troubled future.

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