Something rotten in the state of Louisiana

I have mixed memories of New Orleans. The hospitality was gracious and the cuisine was fine, but there was a pervasive whiff of something rotten which must have a bearing on the city’s lack of preparedness for the present disaster. I once spent an afternoon in the police headquarters hearing about efforts to eliminate corruption in the local force, and I recall an earlier visit in my days as a banker in the 1980s: I found myself being lunched in a dark corner of a restaurant by an adviser to four-term Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, who confidentially offered me a slice of the action in a gas pipeline project across the state. Eager as I was to bring home new business, I knew enough of Governor Edwards’s reputation to make an excuse after the gumbo and leave. Edwards had huge support among poor black and Cajun voters — he once claimed that the only way he could lose a Louisiana election was ‘if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy’ — but was eventually jailed for 10 years for racketeering in connection with licences for the riverboat casinos now wrecked by the hurricane.