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Mitchell: Katrina is Proof People, Including Politicians, Can Team Up

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There’s a saying that politics makes strange bedfellows, meaning people usually at odds sometimes find themselves working together. Katrina did the same thing — but on a bunkhouse scale.

Next month marks a decade since the hurricane etched its name into American history. Several good books document the devastation, tell the stories of suffering, sacrifice and survival. Among them is one by former Gov. Haley Barbour. “America’s Great Storm” will be available in August. One eyebrow goes up at the cover: Jere Nash is list as co-author. That Jere Nash? The one served former Gov. Ray Mabus as chief of staff, among many other, better known roles in Democratic politics?

Well, yes. There’s never been a more Republican Republican than Haley Barbour, but he says in the preface, “Without Jere, and left to my own devices, the book would probably never have happened.”

Both eyebrows: Records reflect that within hours of his shock and awe over the wreckage the storm had wreaked across two-thirds of Mississippi, Barbour started thinking long-term. A coordinating commission tasked with rebuilding would add organization, structure. He could choose any person to head it. Barbour chose Jim Barksdale. What’s weird about that? Barksdale is the one person in America who had spent more than anyone else to keep Barbour from being elected 18 months earlier.
Barbour and Barksdale were on less-than-favorable terms because Barbour, after leaving the Reagan White House and chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, had created a lobbying firm. Among its clients was Microsoft, a rival often labeled an unfair competitor to Netscape, of which Barksdale was CEO.

In turn, when former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat, sought a second term in 2003, Barksdale opened his checkbook. As Barbour tells it, all enmity was washed away. The challenge that Katrina created needed the “best person available,” Barbour wrote. And that person was Jim Barksdale.

Three eyebrows, if we had them: Mississippi House Speaker Bill McCoy, D-Rienzi. He spoke in hushed tones, told people he was a simple worm farmer. But in the second legislative term of Barbour’s career, the worm farmer confounded and bested Barbour, who had once been senior political adviser to the President of the United States.

The issue was tort reform, limits on personal injury lawsuits and how much could be awarded in damages. Barbour was for more. McCoy, who had acceded to some medical malpractice limits under Musgrove, said the Legislature had done enough.
Just eight weeks before Katrina, Barbour had called a special session to slug it out with McCoy. It was brutal. Then, a few weeks after landfall, Barbour was faced with calling another special session — this one related to rebuilding. Simply said, it was going to be essential for casinos and casino-hotels, wiped out by the storm, to return if the coastal counties were going to have economic vitality. They weren’t likely to do that unless they could build on land.

McCoy opposed casinos, period. And he wasn’t interested in granting a new level of permanence. But he listened to Barbour. And the casinos and the thousands of jobs they provide returned.

Disasters are bad things. People die.

But they bring people — all kinds of people — together. Even polar political opposites find common ground.
None of this is the theme of Barbour’s book. It’s pretty apolitical, in fact. In the introduction, former Gulf Coast newspaper executive Ricky Mathews points out something a lot of people already know. In his heart of hearts, Haley Barbour is a policy wonk. He shakes hands well; he gives good speeches. But his jollies come from ideas and formulating strategies. If he never made another public appearance, he wouldn’t miss it — much.

His book is not about political intrigue. It reflects his wonkishness, his love of numbers.
But his theme is that people, not government, are the best managers of their destinies and are capable of amazing feats.
He wrote: “As the (first) week drew to a close, the biggest single reason for my optimism was the spirit and character of the people of Mississippi. These were not wealthy people with great material resources, but they were strong, resilient, self-reliant people. They had borne the brunt of the worst natural disaster in American history; they had been knocked down flat, but I believed they’d get right back up.”

In a summer of random violence, bickering about flags and over who should be licensed to wed, it’s refreshing to remember we can — at least when essential — put all that aside. We can put aside bickering, find solutions.


Charlie Mitchell mugshot 2013

Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist. Write to him at cmitchell43@yahoo.com.

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