I think the difference is that Nagin was just incompetent (not a rare thing among pols) and Blanco was unabashedly obstructionist. It's one thing to be too dumb to know what to do and another to wilfully refuse to do what you are supposed to do.
Nah. We are giving these pols too much credit. They are incompetent. They think politics is about patronage and influence and bashing Republicans. They don't realise what an awesome job of leadership then have. Rudy Giuliani did. He was a former police chief.
From her resume:
[Prior to assuming office,] Governor Blanco completed two terms as Lieutenant Governor. As the state’s second-highest official, she supervised the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. Under her leadership, tourism in Louisiana increased by 41 percent. This growth led to a $2.5 billion increase in the tourism industry’s economic contribution to the state and the creation of 121,000 new tourism-related jobs.
Any wonder why she's a disaster? Her expertise was tourism. And don't forget that Blanco just won her job. Betcha $100 that all her aides are politicos themselves, not experienced leaders.
The real crime is that she was and continues to play politics with this tragedy rather than honestly trying to help people. The dems automatically assume this of Bush because it is they who ALWAYS put political interests ahead of the good of the people. And because that's the way they think first off, they think the pubbies do too. They just don't understand that there are some in this world who do things because they're the right things to do, not "what impact will that have on me politically?". I think that's the primary difference between the actions of the dems and those of the pubbies.
And the first thing out of the dems' mouths is to make public accusations against Bush. They always look before they leap, jump to conclusions before they get their facts. Will the sheeple wake up for the 2006 elections? Honestly, I doubt it. There are too many people who have been taught by liberal-minded teachers and who are beneficiaries of the "do it for me" mentality, the "government will protect us, we don't need weapons for self-defense" attitudes.
It just torques me off the way the masses are so ignorant and self-serving.
Our job is not to sit and criticize, because that doesn't get anything but the press reporting the most extreme actions, because that's what draws listeners. The thing we need to do is accept who our opposition is, and figure out ways to finesse them so we can get back some responsible leadership.
Any Louisiana state and local official who was too corrupt to do his or her job properly is criminally negligent in this disaster, in my opinion. In addition to Blanco and Nagin, the list includes the NO police chief, the NO city council, the Orleans Parish board of supervisors (or whatever they're called), the Louisiana legislature, the Board of Levees (or whatever it's actual title), and the head of the parish (county-level) PD.