In a conversation recorded in the Oval Office on September 10, 1965 at 2:36 in the afternoon, the day after Hurricane Betsy (a Category 4 storm) hit New Orleans, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana started President Lyndon B. Johnson off with a geography lesson:
"Mr. President, aside from the Great Lakes, the biggest lake in America is Lake Pontchartrain. It is now drained dry. That Hurricane Betsy picked up the lake and up and put it inside New Orleans and Jefferson parish."
After noting that his own house had been destroyed, he stated that his true concern was . .
". . my people -- oh, they're in tough shape . . If you want to go to Lousiana right now -- you lost that state last year . . . you could save yourself a campaign speech. Just go there right now and say 'My God, this is horrible! These federally-constructed levees that Hale Boggs and Russell Long built is the the only thing that saved 5,000 lives!"
When Johnson replied that he "had a hell of a two days" ahead on his schedule, Long went in for the kill:
"If you go there right now, Mr. President, they couldn't beat you if Eisenhower ran!"
President Lyndon Johnson then called his director of emergency planning, Buford Ellington, telling him that the people of Louisiana . .
". . feel like nobody cares about them, and they voted against us, and they feel like they're kind of on the outside." Johnson made clear: "I feel about them like a 17-year-old girl; I want them to know they're loved."
At 5:18 pm Air Force One took off from Andrews Air Force Base.
Upon arrival Johnson shouted his statement, as there was no power for the loudspeakers that had been set up:
"I am here because I wanted to see with my own eyes what the unhappy alliance of wind and water have done to this land and its people."
(adapted from an article appearing in The New York Times, September 24, 2005)
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