Glutton of Sympathy

Governor Blanco continues to amaze me with new heights of ineptitude as her re-election campaign has been all but called DOA, but for the usual “anything is possible in Louisiana” caveat. And Clancy DuBos spells out just how slim the “anything is possible” reed is for the Governor, as she has hemorrhaged support in her key demographics.

Her attempt to cross out the “Governor Blanco” from the “Governor Blanco’s Road Home Program” clumsily inset “President Bush” in it’s place was as subtle as the “cat” license from Monty Pythons Fish License sketch. For those of the non-Python appreciating type, it was in fact, “…a dog license with the word 'dog' crossed out and 'cat' written in in crayon.”

There may be, and I believe there is, a real issues to be made in the way the Feds are distributing (or not distributing) the funds already earmarked for the state. Arcane regulations, the per capita inequity between the relief received by Mississippi and Louisiana and the administrations refusal to waive the Stafford act, are all legitimate issues. Even the Wall Street Journal has noticed and asks in a recent article “In Katrina's Wake: Where Is the Money?”

While using the omission of the region in the State of the Union Speech, and the comments by former FUBAR FEMA director Michael Brown as an opportunity to draw attention to the region (and help her sagging ratings) was certainly a reasonable strategy, Governor Blanco’s response was to through a political temper tantrum. And as John Maginnis pointed out in a recent column, no one is rallying to the cause, and as any failed attempt at grandstanding it is turning back on her:

In any case, no one in Washington is rallying around Blanco. Instead, there and in Louisiana she is being admonished to fix her own mess in the Road Home program before blaming the White House for being late with all the money.

Rule: If you are going to grandstand, be sure you have an audience, preferably one that will cheer. However that hasn’t stopped “bayonet charge” Blanco who seems to be caught in the beam from the Blame Thrower. The Times-Picayune described up her next move and summed up the results in a recent Editorial:

Gov. Blanco is trying to blame Congress and the Bush administration for the excruciating delays in the state's Road Home program. But Louisianians know better. In her efforts to deflect growing criticism about the program's slow progress, the governor says Louisianians would already have received their checks if federal funds had not been delivered "six months late."

Somehow I suspect the level of frustration would be nearly the same had had the train wreck that is the Road Home occurred in August, instead of January. And then Blanco made no move to capitalize on the “six months” by setting up the program in anticipation of the funds being allocated. And given the performance of ICF so far, the Governor should not pin her hopes on a flood of checks going out in the next six months. If anything things could get a lot uglier for the Governor when summer rolls around.

And as the article and editorial notes, no-one is fooled. A recent visit by Sen. Joe Lieberman and by Sen. Barack Obama, while a positive note overall, a great deal of time was spent in dissecting the failure of the Road Home program, and a lot less on the billions of dollars of other funding that is truly bottled up by the Feds. Without Blanco’s inept attempt “save her bacon” misdirection campaign, there might have been hope of playing for sympathy as we “had” to make it so complicated to prevent corruption to “appease” the administration…or something like that. But that would mean thinking about the state and it needs first.

[For the record, while Mississippi by the numbers received more aid than Louisiana, I do not mean to disparage our neighbors to the east, or imply that what they received was unfair. If anything, their total does not begin to address the need of the Gulf coast, and therefore Louisiana that much less. Rather than looking at it as a competition, the affected states need to start talking to each other and speaking together as a region and seeking funds and solutions to the problems we share.]