Then he should have used the media spotlight he was in and publicized the whole thing. He would have been a hero instead of being an accomplice in the attempted negligent homicide of 250,000 people.
You do *not* put political games ahead of the lives of 250,000 of your fellow citizens. That's monstrous. We hung people after WW2 for almost the same exact reason.
Well, it's not like he had much time to work with. I'm not excusing him. But the published plan was unrealistic, calling for evacuation of outlying parishes, then voluntary evacuation of New Orleans, then mandatory evacuation. That plan was stupid- to carry it out would have taken what, four days? This storm came out of nowhere fast.
It appears the state rigidly followed the plan and used up all the time that should have been used for mandatory evacuations. Nagin was up against the wall: he had one day to perform a mandatory evacuation. With traffic as bad as it was Sunday, he could have only gotten one trip out of the buses- and he didn't have time to force Blanco to open up shelters, even if he went public.
There was a very real chance those buses could have gotten stuck in a traffic jam while the hurricane blew over, or ran out of gas before he could get the riders to shelter.
Nagin isn't innocent, but at the same time, look who he had to work with.