Democracy for Vancouver

From Scout we learn that:

A national commission today rejected New Orleans’ bid to host a 2008 presidential debate, deciding that the city was not sufficiently recovered from Hurricane Katrina to handle such an important event.

You complete morons.

You don’t hold a Presidential Debate in New Orleans because it’s a world-class city - though it is.

You hold a Presidential Debate in New Orleans because:

(1) the city needs and deserves the attention that a Presidential Debate would bring;

(2) the city needs and deserves the economic stimulus that a Presidential Debate would bring; and,

(3) because New Orleans symbolizes everything that’s been wrong with this country for the last seven years, and gives the debate a great big basket of issues to address.

If Bush could light up Jackson Square when no one else had power in the weeks after Katrina, surely 3 years after the floods (and with a year’s notice) New Orleans could be made ready.

Hell, maybe it’s even an opportunity for the candidates to encourage their supporters to visit New Orleans and maybe even do some volunteer work while they’re there.

Are we such a narcissistic country that the people arranging the debates can’t see beyond what the city can do for the debates to consider what the debates could do for their host cities?

No city is more in need of the better angels of our nature than New Orleans. Who stole the American soul?