One of the very first reactions that the president of the United States had to the devastation of the city of New Orleans was to recall publicly how he used to overindulge himself there. Of course, that was back before he began channeling the spirit of Lyndon Johnson through the accountants at Halliburton. That was before he used the shiny little wing nuts of The Heritage Foundation to fasten to himself the gleaming armor of the New Deal. So, I figured that because the boundaries of feckless bad taste already had been breached (and by a professional at that), I might as well mention my favorite night in New Orleans.
(It is of historical note that the incumbent is now the first president since James Madison to have lost an American city on his watch. And, it should be further noted that, on his way out of town, Madison stopped to rally American troops from his saddle in the field. I don't think he stopped off to play faux fiddler at a fund-raiser before that, but my research is ongoing.)
Anyway, this was back about 12 years ago, when I was writing about sports full time, and I found myself in evil company, which is to say with a voodoo woman and two basketball coaches, one of whom was American and the other Russian. Now, there are reasonable souls who'd point out that, in hanging around with a reporter and two basketball coaches, it was actually the voodoo woman who was keeping evil company, but no matter.
Anyway, night turned into day and, at the end of things, I was explaining to the Russian gentleman the concept of John the Conqueror Root, teaching him that there were things about America that he wasn't going to learn at the mall. The country, I told him, kept its best parts out of the hands of people who would never understand them. And that, if you wanted to find them, you had to go and look for them within yourself
Bob Dylan says that in New Orleans, everything was a good idea. That city's gone now, abandoned in its hour of direst need by a political establishment drawn from a cramped cultural class as uncomfortable with that part of America represented by New Orleans as it is with progressive taxation. New Orleans called all the American bluffs, from the Declaration of Independence all the way through the Bill of Rights and the Emancipation Proclamation.
New Orleans was about free people expressing themselves freely. It was the place where the American idea fashioned most of the best parts of its soul, and the place from which it sent that soul out into the world, despite the fact that the soul itself was forged in those places where the promise of America was so clearly the biggest, emptiest bluff of all. This complex and paradoxical place -- and, therefore, this most American place -- is now in the hands of people who will never understand it, and it will be rebuilt within a culture against which it always stood in opposition. Who says God's irony can't be cruel when He wants it to be?
I'm sure it will shine. I'm sure it will sparkle. I'm sure that tourism will come back. And I already can hear the shiny, sparkling people on CNN talking about the resilience of the place, clarinets tootling away in the background. It will not be New Orleans, though, not in any way that really ever mattered. It is in the hands of the people who only ever came to New Orleans to overindulge and vomit on the sidewalk. It will be most important to bring back the conventioneers, and they're the ones who've paid to support the government into whose hands New Orleans has fallen.
Look at this bunch -- all the pasty-faced grayboys itching to try out their Charles Murray starter kits. Look at how glibly they toss aside the prevailing wage and decades of environmental laws. Watch them make even the limited social safety net that existed in New Orleans -- not to mention the monumental act of enlightened self-interest that Huey Long turned into Charity Hospital -- into a relic. Watch them preach freedom as little more than a set of economic boundaries. This is like handing the restoration of the Sistine Chapel over to a bunch of housepainters from Westchester County.
The lessons of two generations of conservative philosophy will now be played out on a battered place and a battered people, despite the fact that the fundamental tenets of that same philosophy are now a pulpy, useless mass floating in a bacterial stew. If nothing else, the legacy of this administration will be that of a profound mistrust of human freedom. It is messy. It is inconvenient. It sprouts up in the damndest places. It popped up in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, grew long, sweet roots, and blossomed again in Preservation Hall in New Orleans, where it learned to sing.
The town of Louis Armstrong will be rebuilt to the music of Milton Friedman. A city known for the originality and extravagance of its native political corruption will now be run by the discreet principles of well-tailored cronies from far away. A city once under the spell of the voodoo women will be placed under the influence of the spin doctors. New Orleans has traded Marie Laveau for Karl Rove, Buddy Bolden for Dan Bartlett, and the Kingfish for George W. Bush. Even by the standards of the old, lost city, that's a sucker play. How can these people give a city back to the rest of us if they so hated everything that made it great? They are people in whom nothing throbs, and they're deafer than the dead are to the beat of the second line.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer at The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.
