When homes and jobs and the whole damn economy seems at stake, the pump has stopped, at least in the media's focus, appearing to be such a threatening object.
New Orleans may be, according to the old slogan, "the city that care forgot", but, judging by this campaign, it's certainly the city America forgot.
Both liberals and conservatives would prefer not to confront an uncomfortable fact: something in our system of providing for major infrastructure has gone terribly wrong.
The Kafkaesque mobius strip of bureaucratic delays and excuses in New Orleans contrasts interestingly with the long-ago Jackson Square promise by the president to cut through red tape.
