Clinton tells of hurricane's 'profound' effect
America could become a less divided society as result of hurricane Katrina, former US President Bill Clinton said today.
“Americans were profoundly disturbed by the losses suffered and by the sense that maybe our government did not perform as well as it should have,” Mr Clinton said.
“There was a profound sense of grief at the magnitude of the losses and not only the death but the dislocation of a million people.
“And I think people were very sensitive to the fact that it disproportionately affected Americans of colour, principally African Americans, and low income Americans.
“So I think it is likely to make us far more sensitive to things that divide us, to fight them, and largely to make us far more sensitive to the importance of effective, good government after repeated decades of often voting for the party that condemned government.
“You know, we all hate government until we need it. So as a Democrat I think that is a positive thing for our country.”
George Bush has appointed his predecessor Bill Clinton, along with his own father, George Bush Senior, a special envoy for New Orleans, and the surrounding area.
Mr Clinton said he had ordered a project to stop flooding in the area while he was in the White House, but this was scrapped in 2003 “presumably because of Iraq”.
“I do not know whether, had that project continued, it would have mitigated the flooding. Maybe someone knows. I don’t know,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“New Orleans had a lot of poor people, when I was President we reduced the number of people living in poverty by about eight million. That is starting to go back up again.”
Like many US cities, New Orleans was very divided in to rich and poor areas, the former president said. “The more we can integrate this the more likely we are to avoid the kinds of consequences we had,” he said.
Mr Clinton said the thing that “pained me most” was that those taking the decisions did not appear to understand how poor people lived.
“I don’t believe there was deliberate racism in the response to this at all,” he said.
However, the authorities obviously had not “understood how poor people live,” he continued.
“People without cars, or people taking care of aunts and uncles or parents or grandparents without cars, people without any insurance on their home or goods thinking they couldn’t leave because it was all they had and they had no way to insure it.
“Poor people are no less intelligent, by and large, and no lazier, by and large, than the rest of the population.
“Most of them are hard working people for whom life didn’t present a lot of breaks but they do live differently and it was painful to see them pay a disproportionate share of the burden because they just couldn’t get up and evacuate in response to an order.
“You had to have a system there to help them extricate themselves. I hope we learn something about all this as a people that will bring us together not just across racial lines but income lines as well.”
Mr Clinton said his wife Hillary, a New York senator, would make a “magnificent” president if, as tipped, she decides to stand.
“The truth is I don’t know what is going to happen on that,” he said.
“My wife is running for re-election. I’m biased I know but I’m a good judge and she has been a fabulous, she has been a great senator – an unusually effective one in a short period of time.
“She is going to present herself to the voters of her state and ask them to ratify her service and I think they will.
“But she can only think of that right now and we will cross that other bridge if it comes up, I have no idea whether it will.
“If she ever were to run and win she would be a magnificent choice, she’d do a great job.”
