NYT – On Gulf Coast, Praise for Obama, Criticism of Visit
At Willie’s Auto Repair in the Lower Ninth Ward, just a few blocks from a school where President Obama is scheduled to speak on Thursday morning, Mr. Obama received Jerome Bienaime’s endorsement.
“President’s doing a good job as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Bienaime, 71, said. “And he ain’t even been there a year.”
Mr. Bienaime’s sentiment was generally shared among officials and residents in interviews on the eve of Mr. Obama’s first visit to the area since taking office, a marked contrast to local opinion about President George W. Bush.
But the praise for Mr. Obama’s work has, in recent days, been eclipsed by criticism of his visit.
Mr. Obama, who visited the city five times during his presidential campaign and attacked Mr. Bush for his response to Hurricane Katrina, is spending only a few hours here — at the charter school and at a campus of the University of New Orleans, where he is holding a town-hall-style meeting — before flying to San Francisco for a fund-raiser. He is not visiting the storm-ravaged areas in Mississippi.
Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican from southeastern Louisiana, held a news conference in which he called Mr. Obama’s visit a “drive-through daiquiri summit.” Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, wrote a critical five-page letter to the president. Mississippi editorial writers are not pleased either.
Read more at The New York Times
10/15/9
Magnolia Tribune
