Mitt paid a visit to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans Friday for the photo op and empathy moments. Only, it seems he kind of forgot the empathy moments.
Via Huffington Post:
Romney and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) spent close to an hour meeting with first responders and local officials. Romney shook hands with National Guardsmen outside the U.S. Post Office and talked with a local resident, Jodie Chiarello, 42, who lost her home in Isaac's flooding.
"He just told me to, um, there's assistance out there," Chiarello said of her conversation with Romney. "He said, go home and call 211." That's a public service number offered in many states.
Chiarello said she will likely seek some other shelter because her home was submerged in the flooding. She expressed frustration about the town's lack of flood protection.
"We live outside the levee protection that's why we get all this water because they close the floodgates up front and all they're doing is flooding us out down here," she said. "It's very frustrating, very. We go through Katrina and Rita and now we're going through Cindy, Lee and now Isaac."
Bill Clinton was the king of empathy. He was better at feeling people's pain than just about any other president I can recall. Barack Obama is not as good as Clinton, but he still gets something across to tell these people that he's on their side.
Telling someone to go home when their home is flooded and they just said so? That's either a case of arrogance or an inability to actually take the 30 seconds out to actually listen to them. I'm sure Mitt was busy gladhanding Bobby Jindal and couldn't really be bothered to think about actual solutions, but that response seems cold, ironic, and downright mean.
