Obama: Too Short of a Stay?

In New Orleans, most people are pretty happy with our president, Mr. Obama. “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.” In fact, scheduled this Thursday is Obama's visit to the Gulf Coast. However, despite some of the praise for the new president, his visit terms to New Orleans was met with criticism.

Apparently, Obama is only going to stay in that state for a few hours, visiting a charter school and an university, then heading to our San Francisco for a fundraiser. So what's the problem? Well, many people think that this visit is definitely way too hasty and kind of contradictory of what the President previously had said.

The president is not visiting any areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, despite his attack on Bush for Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina. Also, during his campaign, Obama visited the city of New Orleans five times. Some people, like a strong supporter Lawrence N. Powell, said“I know he’s got a lot going on, but I think this needed to be approached differently. You can’t multitask a world-historical tragedy.”

Other people like Nick Shapiro, White House speaker, says that all this criticism is not necessary since Obama is already doing some of the things that the people of New Orleans wanted and that this is not Obama's last visit to the region. Obama's administration is also setting up and doing projects that rebuild the Gulf Coast, set up more protection, etc. I personally do not think that all the criticism is that warranted, since Obama definetly will visit this region sometime soon and the administration is directing money and efforts toward rebuilding and aiding the Gulf Coast. However, I can understand how Obama's hasty visit appears to be contradictory of what he stated in his campaign. What do you guys think?

-Henry Zhang