Katrina on the Mississippi side of the Mississippi

LA Times:

...

"Our people weren't looking for somebody to blame," Barbour said, his deep, Yazoo City drawl rounding his vowels. "They weren't whining or moping. . . . We got knocked down hard. And people got back up, hitched up their britches and went to work."

This down-home mantra is Barbour's attempt to instill a unifying sense of pride in this perennial underdog of a state. It's a message he hopes will resonate across lines of race and class.

To voters like Patrick Bass, a 38-year-old black Democrat, it is the language of leadership, the kind he has come to expect from Barbour. Next door in Louisiana, Bass said, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's post-storm governance seemed "somewhat shaky. Here, we knew [Barbour] had a vision."

...

Meanwhile, Katrina has done strange things to Mississippi state coffers: Rebuilding efforts have led to an increase in state tax revenue, allowing Barbour to boast that he balanced the budget without raising taxes.

Though the state may be on the upswing, housing advocates say that the poor along the coast have been left behind. They are especially critical of a plan to use $600 million in federal housing funds to expand the port of Gulfport, while 11,400 families remain in trailers.

That was the Rev. Henry McNeal's main concern as he listened to Barbour in the Biloxi living room. McNeal's coastal flock are working- and middle-class blacks, many of whom he said were still living in trailers and substandard housing.

When Barbour made his way to McNeal, the pastor asked him whom he should talk to about the issue. Barbour moved in close, looked McNeal in the eye and said, "Talk to me."

Barbour then proceeded to put McNeal in his shoes, leading him through a dizzying five-minute discourse on the intricacies of federal disaster funding. The gist of it: The coast was going to get a better port and more housing for the working class. It was just going to take time to get through the federal red tape.

"Remember," Barbour said, "we're making it up as we go along." That "we" was classic Barbour. It might have referred to the wonks in his administration. But maybe it referred to all the plucky, can-do Mississippians digging their way out of the mess. Either way, McNeal, a Democrat, said the governor made a good impression.

"I'm impressed, I really am," he said. "I have a good feeling about him."

Barbour is favored to win reelection and he deserves it. While some of his critics claim that Mississippi profited from his old ties to Washington, most people would consider that a plus that helped out the state in a time of need. One of the things I like about him is the attitude reflected in the first quoted paragraph above. Unlike some of the "leaders" on the other side of the Mississippi, he was not looking to shift responsibility. That is certainly one sign of a leader.