OK, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm any sort of expert on New Orleans, or its municipal politics, and so on. I don't live there, and can assure you that Red Stick might be an hour and a half to the northwest, but...sigh...it's almost as if it were in a different universe.
B.R. could easily serve as the punchine to the joke about the difference between culture and agriculture.
That said, the latest example of Nagin's, er, governing style, certainly gives the impression that the mayor's existing reputation remains intact. Unfortunately, his reputation is that of at best a bumbling fool...and possibly a crook.
Whether his reputation is earned or not, Nagin, whether he likes it or not, seems to be as much an obstacle as anything these days. And, not unlike my own attitudes towards another New Orleans politician I don't know well but hold in similarly low esteem--Dollar Bill--my .00000002 cent's worth re: Mayor Nagin is that, if he really DID have the interest of the city at heart, he'd resign as a matter of the public good.
I'm sure he could come up with a way of maintaining or even improving his personal revenue stream once freed from the burden of public employment. And such a move might even generate enough sympathy to salve if not salvage his personal reputation.
But I'll tell you--not that I travel a lot, but when I do--and when the subject of New Orleans comes up--people invariably tell me they believe Ray Nagin is [paraphrasing here] either crooked or an incompetent nincompoop.
And you know what? I can't think of anything he's done to counter such a perception.
No comments:
Post a Comment