Thanks for the Lip Service

Several commenters to my previous posts about New Orleans have plumped for Sen. John Edwards, citing his decision to use New Orleans as a backdrop for the announcement of his candidacy as evidence of his commitment to the cause of the city. (Me, I felt it was evidence of his commitment to a good backdrop.)

So today on MSNBC, Chris Matthews showed part of his interview with Edwards (as well as Clinton and Obama) at the AFSCME convention. At the end of a long answer to a question asking for "grand ideas" from the Democrats, Edwards said, "New Orleans is a national disgrace, something should be done about that." Neither grand nor an idea, just a sentiment brimming with emptiness.

Fortunately Matthews followed up (you heard it here first!), and asked Edwards to expand on the subject. What followed was a litany of half-truths followed by the most cliché of accusations. He claimed that in the 9th ward and "St Bernard's (sic) Parish," "nothing has changed." I was in St. Bernard Parish and the lower 9th on Friday, and while there's plenty -- more than plenty -- of work to be done, citizens and volunteers have accomplished some amazing things, and the evidence is on the streets. But still, given the opportunity actually to tell us his vision of what went wrong and what should be done, all Edwards could come up with was "failure of Presidential leadership," and his already tired "I'd have a person in my office, and every day I'd ask him what he did yesterday to help New Olreans" riff. No mention of levees, no mention of coastal restoration, no mention of the dysfunctional Road Home program -- no specifics whatsoever, unlike his very detailed prescriptions for health care, for third-world economic aid, for a myriad of other issues.

It's almost as if, despite his touted many visits to the city, everything he knows about New Orleans he learned from Anderson Cooper.