Decision Points

Republicans—concluded they would be better off opposing me than working together. We managed to get important things done, including reauthorizing the AIDS initiative, fully funding our troops, confirming Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, and responding to the financial crisis. But the legacy of fall 2005 lingered for the rest of my time in office.
    This is not to suggest that I didn’t make mistakes during Katrina. I should have urged Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to evacuate New Orleans sooner. I should have come straight back to Washington from California on Day Two or stopped in Baton Rouge on Day Three. I should have done more to signal my sympathy for the victims and my determination to help, the way I did in the days after 9/11.
    My biggest substantive mistake was waiting too long to deploy active-duty troops. By Day Three, it was clear that federal troops were needed to restore order. If I had it to do over again, I would have sent the 82nd Airborne immediately, without law enforcement authority. I hesitated at the time because I didn’t want to leave our troops powerless to stop sniper attacks and the other shocking acts of violence we were hearing about on TV. We later learned these accounts were wildly overstated, the result of overzealous correspondents under pressure to fill every second of the twenty-four-hour cable news cycle.
    Ultimately, the story of Katrina is that it was the storm of the century. It devastated an area the size of Great Britain, produced almost nine times more debris than any previously recorded hurricane, and killed more people than any storm in seventy-five years. The economic toll—three hundred thousand homes destroyed and $96 billion in property damage—outstripped that of every previous hurricane on record.
    Yet destruction and death did not have the final word for the people of the Gulf Coast. In August 2008, I visited Gulfport, Mississippi, and Jackson Barracks in New Orleans, the home of the Louisiana National Guard, which had flooded during Katrina. It was striking to see how much had changed in three years.
    In Mississippi, workers had cleared forty-six million cubic yards of storm debris, double the amount Hurricane Andrew left behind. More than forty-three thousand residents had repaired or rebuilt their homes. Traffic flowed over new bridges spanning Biloxi Bay and Bay St. Louis. Tourists and employees had returned to revitalized casinos and beachfront hotels. And in an inspiring sign, every school damaged by Katrina had reopened.
    While many predicted New Orleans would never be a major city again, 87 percent of the population before Katrina had returned. The I-10 bridge connecting New Orleans and Slidell had reopened. The numberof restaurants in the city had exceeded the pre-Katrina figure. More than seventy thousand citizens had repaired or rebuilt their homes. The floodwalls and levees around New Orleans had been strengthened, and the Army Corps of Engineers had begun a massive project to provide “100-year flood protection.” The Superdome that once housed thousands of Katrina victims became the proud home of the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints.
    The most uplifting change of all has come in education. Public schools that were decaying before the storm have reopened as modern facilities, with new teachers and leaders committed to reform and results. Dozens of charter schools have sprouted up across the city, offering parents more choices and greater flexibility. The Catholic archdiocese, led by Archbishop Alfred Hughes, continued its long tradition of educational excellence by reopening its schools quickly. The year after Katrina, New Orleans students improved their test scores. They improved more the next year, and even more the year after that.
    When I gave my Farewell Address from the East Room of the White House in January 2009, one of the guests I invited was Dr. Tony Recasner , principal of Samuel J. Green Charter School in New Orleans. Tony started at the school in July 2005, after it had underperformed so severely that it was taken over by the state. Then Katrina hit.
    When I visited in 2007, Tony told me about his innovative teaching methods, such as having students focus on one subject at a time for several weeks. He also told me about the results. Despite the enormous disadvantages facing his students, the percentage of those reading and doing math at grade level had more than tripled. “This school, which did not serve the community well