Obama pledges full recovery for the Gulf Coast

Visiting New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the president vows to finish restoring the region.

Barack Obama was in New Orleans on Sunday to deliver a message of hope to communities still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, but there was an underlying political tone to his remarks. The mismanagement of relief efforts in the wake of the storm was one of the previous Republican administration’s biggest failures, and with the Democrats poised to lose seats in November’s mid-term elections, Obama is anxious not to let anyone forget the mistakes of his predecessor. In a speech at Xavier University Obama contrasted the progress his administration has made with the Bush administration’s hurricane response, which was widely criticized as slow and ineffective.