Banks, Yes. New Orleans, Not Really.

Eugene Robinson wishes Obama hadn't bothered to go to New Orleans:

More than a year later, I covered a Senate subcommittee hearing in New
Orleans on the lagging reconstruction effort. I watched as a young senator who
was thought to be considering a presidential run -- that would be Barack Obama
-- used his Harvard Law skills to eviscerate Bush-era officials for not doing
enough to rebuild and revive the Gulf Coast region.

So it was strange and disheartening that Obama would wait nine months
to make his first visit to New Orleans as president. It was stunning that he
would spend only a few hours on the ground and that he wouldn't set foot in
Mississippi or Alabama at all. But worst of all was the way he seemed to dismiss
the idea that his administration could and should be doing much more.
I know
that local officials say the Obama administration is more responsive and more
effective than the Bush administration, but that's not saying much. What says
more is that New Orleans still doesn't have an operational full-service
hospital. And that an adequate flood barrier is still not in place.

"I wish I could just write a check," Obama said. If that was his
message, he should have stayed home. We now know that our government can make
hundreds of billions of dollars available to irresponsible Wall Street
institutions within a matter of days, if necessary. We can open up the
floodgates of credit to too-big-to-fail banks at the stroke of a pen. But when
it comes to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, well, these things take time.