While Obama Plays Golf, Donald Trump and Mike Pence Visit Flood Ravaged Louisiana

Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence were in Louisiana Friday to survey the flood damage that killed at least 13 people and displaced thousands more.

Mike Pence arrived in Baton Rouge ahead of Trump Friday, where he met with Louisiana’s most senior Republican officials. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, says he won’t be involved in Trump’s visit.

A torrent of about 2 feet of rain inundated the southern part of the state, devastating areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina over a decade ago.

Mike Pence Arrives In Baton Rouge To Tour Flood Damage

Trump’s new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway suggested that the visit was part of a larger effort, like his speech on Thursday, to pivot to a more presidential phase.

“It’s also presidential today to have him and Governor Pence going to Louisiana in a decidedly nonpolitical event,” she told ABC’s Good Morning America Friday,” adding that they would be “going to help people on the ground who are in need.”

President Obama is on vacation and apparently, can’t be bothered with mundane matters like the catastrophe occurring in Louisiana as record flood waters are finally beginning to recede.

In an anguished editorial, the Baton Rouge paper The Advocate begs President Obama to visit the flood ravaged communities. But so far, the president has shown little interest in interrupting his golfing and socializing  to do his job:

Last week, as torrential rains brought death, destruction and misery to Louisiana, the president continued his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, a playground for the posh and well-connected.

We’ve seen this story before in Louisiana, and we don’t deserve a sequel. In 2005, a fly-over by a vacationing President George W. Bush became a symbol of official neglect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The current president was among those making political hay out of Bush’s aloofness.

Sometimes, presidential visits can get in the way of emergency response, doing more harm than good. But we don’t see that as a factor now that flood waters are subsiding, even if at an agonizing pace. It’s past time for the president to pay a personal visit, showing his solidarity with suffering Americans.

Like his predecessors, Obama has no doubt discovered that crises keep their own calendar, even when commanders-in-chief are trying to take some time off the clock. It’s an inconvenience of the presidency, but it’s what chief executives sign up for when they take the oath of office.

And if the president can interrupt his vacation for a swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday, then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that’s displaced thousands.

The optics of Obama golfing while Louisiana residents languished in flood waters was striking. It evoked the precedent of the passive federal response to the state’s agony in 2005, a chapter of history no one should ever repeat.

With Obama snoozing and Hillary resting, it has fallen to Donald Trump to be the one to act presidential.

The post While Obama Plays Golf, Donald Trump And Mike Pence Visit Flood Ravaged Louisiana appeared first on Now The End Begins.