The feedback was very strong, and I appreciate it greatly. Thanks to everyone who contributed, and feel free to keep the discussion going in the comments.
However, I must say that no one really wanted to make the argument that former Mayor Moon Landrieu bears an inordinate amount of blame for the decline of New Orleans since the 1960's. No one made the argument that he was significantly more corrupt than those who preceeded or followed him. No one pointed to a policy of his (other than desegregation) which led to families and businesses relocating out of the city.
Yet, one of the arguments made against Mayoral candidate Mitch Landrieu, makes use of the linkage between his father and "the decline of New Orleans". Beyond being an unrepentant desegregationist, I don't see why Moon should bear inordinate blame for New Orleans' decline. Sure he participated in it, but who didn't? Couldn't one make a stronger case against New Orleans' "social and financial conservatives", as acclaimed historian John Barry did?
A post-Katrina analysis from the Sic Semper Tyrannis 2006 blog echoed Barry's (persuasive) description of Louisiana conservatism, broadly conceived. Here are the key graphs:
New Orleans, and Louisiana as a whole, are rather unique in that they are important to the entire nation (as the largest-by-volume port in the United States and largest refiner of crude) yet receive very little direct tax revenue from that fact. New Orleans is prohibited from taxing the goods flowing through its port (interstate commerce, y'know), just as Louisiana is prohibited from taxing the oil flowing in the pipelines to those refineries and the gasoline flowing out of the pipelines from those refineries. While they can raise some tax revenue from property taxes on the infrastructure itself (pipelines, refineries, etc.), Louisiana is in the unenviable position of being a key linchpin of the U.S. economy, yet not itself able to gain much advantage from that fact. Mechanization has made this worse. It now only takes a few thousand workers to run the entire Port of New Orleans thus they don't even get much payroll advantage out of it. Similarly, today's refineries are so computerized that you might have a dozen people total running a billion-dollar refinery. (Usually there's more people than that out there -- there's always light bulbs to replace, instruments to calibrate, chemical nozzles to replace to keep the cooling towers Ph-balanced, etc. etc. -- but definitely not a big payroll). And the companies themselves conveniently headquarter themselves in states that have no income tax, so Louisiana cannot even tax their income.This seems largely correct. But current politics dictate that Moon Landrieu should be linked with the "decline of New Orleans", and therefore his son shouldn't become mayor, because he is hopelessly contaminated with this "politics of the past".
The answer is economic diversification. But Louisiana is a very conservative state, conservative in the old meaning of the word -- they do not embrace change swiftly nor easily, one reason why New Orleans had such an old-world charm (they just never bothered changing). As late as the late 1980's, Louisiana was trying to attract heavy industry (such as, e.g., the GM pickup truck plant in Shreveport) at the same time that the U.S. economy as a whole was discarding industrial jobs in favor of services and intellectual property based jobs. A state which embraces change only reluctantly was in a poor position to, e.g., respond to the computer and semiconductor revolutions of the 1980's and 1990's by attracting semiconductor and computer companies to Louisiana, and indeed did rather poorly at doing so (and what few were attracted ended up at the bottom of Lake George, since they came here for New Orleans).
The end result is that Louisiana simply does not have the resources to rebuild from this natural disaster, and is reliant upon the "charity" of those who are reliant upon its ports and oil and gas industry.
I disagree with this simplistic formula. I think, at best, it's empty. But this is an important election and specious political arguments abound.
However, in my next post, I will argue why-- even if you take into account all of Mitch Landrieu's alleged faults, and all of Ray Nagin's virtues-- the choice for mayor of New Orleans is clear as day. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer.
You can rely on me.