Nagin faces questions of his leadership

Mayor Nagin is showing the same lack of leadership that made evacuation of hospitals impossible and emergency services in disarray during Katrina. Even local New Orleans stations are becoming fed up.

Weeping and cursing in frustration at one point, jauntily announcing the city's comeback at another, Ray Nagin has pursued an erratic course as mayor of this woeful city over the past three weeks. Last week, for example, he announced plans to quickly reopen much of New Orleans without even consulting federal officials.

It gets even worse.

This week, Nagin missed a meeting with the top federal official in New Orleans because of a late flight, and at one point accused that official, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, of trying to make himself the federal mayor of New Orleans.

While we didn't hear that from the MSM, we'll take the Louisiana tv station's word for it. It sounds like Nagin. (Update: It is, apparently, true. The New Orleans Times Picayune reported the Nagin story. ) From the Times Picayune:

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen had already publicly questioned whether Nagin’s timeline to bring back residents of the Uptown and French Quarter neighborhoods, among those least damaged by Hurricane Katrina, was overly ambitious.

Allen cited the lack of vital city services, including drinking water, sewerage, a working 911 system and a lack of functioning emergency rooms, and said the plan was "extremely problematic."

Earlier in the day, Nagin was quoted as sarcastically calling Allen the "federally appointed mayor of New Orleans."At the news conference, he called Allen "a good man."But, he added, "When he starts talking to the citizens of New Orleans, he’s kind of out of his league. There’s only one mayor of New Orleans, and I’m it."

All along the Katrina efforts have sounded like a power struggle between the Mayor and the Governor and the Federal government whose greatest failure might have been being unlucky enough to get in the middle with a FEMA director who lacked sufficient aggressiveness to overcome the corruption, the bureaucratic ineptness and inertia that is endemic to Louisiana, let alone the political egos.