Obama has taken time out from his two-week break in Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of MA, to help raise money to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in the November 8 election.
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Obama is not the only one who has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the battered state.
The President is in Martha’s Vineyard on vacation.
According to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center of Politics, Obama may be waiting for the water to recede, since his visit could affect rescue efforts.
He is scheduled to return to the White House on Sunday evening.
“Thousands of people in Louisiana have lost everything they own and need our help now”, said Brad Kieserman, vice president, Disaster Services Operations and Logistics for the Red Cross. “A disaster this big begs for the personal presence of the President at ground zero”.
State leaders have declared the situation “historic” and “unprecedented”, and the federal government has, yet again, declared a major disaster in the region…. “In 2005, a fly-over by a vacationing President George W. Bush became a symbol of official neglect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina”.
On Wednesday the White House announced the president was receiving updates on the flooding from high-ranking members of his staff; he spoke by phone with Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards earlier this week.
In lieu of visiting himself, Obama tasked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson with making the trip to Louisiana Thursday to survey the devastation. 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. In 2014, President Obama was criticized for staying on vacation after a Russian missile downed a commercial airliner, and was also criticized for interrupting his vacation to take meetings at the White House on the issue of immigration.
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“Quite frankly that is not something that I want to go through right now”. While a White House spokeswoman said the president also spoke with FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate to get an update after Fugate’s visit to the area, there are now no confirmed plans for Obama to end his vacation early.
