Political author, strategist and television commentator James Carville insisted to a half-full Salomon 101 Thursday that lessons must be learned from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, but not before he found some humor in the disaster's wake.
"My brother asked after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita if now I have any idea what it feels like to be out of power," said Carville, a New Orleans native. "I told him, 'I'm a Democrat in Washington and you're asking me if I know what it feels like to be out of power? Are you kidding me?' "
Carville gained national attention for his work as a strategist in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign and co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire" with Tucker Carlson until its final broadcast in June 2005.
Carville's lecture was sponsored by Sigma Chi and the Brown Lecture Board. He will donate his $10,000 speaker's fee to the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a Hurricane Katrina relief organization. A collection bin was passed around the lecture hall during his speech for cash donations from the audience.
Carville said there is "no justification" for why levees in New Orleans did not protect the city.
"When those levees broke, a lot broke with them," he said, expressing bewilderment that such a thing could happen in the United States.
He maintained that an investigation into New Orleans' lack of preparedness for the hurricane is essential to learning any sort of lesson from the disaster.
"It stuns me that this (Bush) administration has so little curiosity about why we have a major American city underwater," Carville said. "They are going to do everything that they can to not look into that, (saying) it's just a blame game. I don't care if it's a blame game - we need to know."
Instead, rebuilding New Orleans will be relegated to "a half-baked congressional committee asking Michael Brown idiotic questions," Carville said, referring to the former Federal Emergency Management Agency director. "This is so little about Michael Brown it ain't even funny. You know what we call him in New Orleans? Drownie."
He said that it is up to individual Americans to use their organizing skills and advocacy to demand an answer for what happened "so we don't make the same mistake again."
"I wish I could be more optimistic with you as young people, but you have problems. This country has problems. And my generation is not going to solve them for you. You're going to have to do it yourselves," Carville leveled with his mostly student audience.
He harkened back to when he was in college in Louisiana in 1962, remembering when French President Charles de Gaulle declared during the Cuban missile crisis that he needed no photographic proof of the missiles in Cuba if he had the word of the president of the United States.
"I hate to tell you this, but you are not a young person in such a world," Carville said. "I think that's what we should all want - where the word of your president and country is something the world can count on."
Carville also took time to poke fun at President Bush's knowledge of French.
"President Bush looked Jacques Chirac right in the eye and said, 'You know, the problem with you French is that you don't have a word for entrepreneur,'" Carville, also known as the Ragin' Cajun, told an amused crowd.
(Citing a speech by a British noblewoman, the British press reported in 2002 that Bush had made the remark during a private conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair, but doubt was later cast on the story, with Blair's spokesman denying that Bush had told Blair any such thing.)
In a question-and-answer session following his speech, Carville talked more about the current state of the Democratic and Republican parties.
"There is a level of systematic corruption that exists in Washington and the Repub-lican Party that we're just seeing the beginning of," he said. "The country isn't looking to Republicans in 2006, they're looking for Democrats to step in and do something."
Carville said the Democratic Party had trouble settling on a message for the 2004 presidential race and got "bogged down" by "too much tactics and not enough strategy."
He called for more consistency in the party. "Can't Demo-crats come together in the name of reform?" Carville asked.
But more important to Carville is that all Americans take equal responsibility for their country's future.
"An extended period of peace and prosperity led to pettiness (in the United States)," he said. "The best way to deal with it is to come in with some bold new ideas and expose the pettiness for what it is. Talk about something bigger (than minor differences). Give people something to be for."
Carville said that he stopped working on domestic political campaigns because "in Amer-ica, once you become a famous person, all you can do is be a famous person." Asked whom he hopes to vote for in the 2008 presidential race, Carville alluded to Hillary Clinton in a quip he has used before: "I can tell you who I am for (for) president, and it's not a he."
Carville, who played bit roles in the feature films "Old School" and "Wedding Crashers," said that he is "proud to be associated with both movies" but urged audience members to go to theaters for the upcoming "All the King's Men," which Carville is co-producing and will star Sean Penn and Jude Law. "It is the best movie you have ever seen," he deadpanned.
In a brief interview with The Herald following his speech, Carville focused on a more somber note, explaining his greatest concerns for politics in the country today.
"Democrats don't present a cogent alternative," he said. "Republicans raise money like I know they're capable of doing. We know what the Republicans are: they're failed. But Democrats need to present an alternative in 2006."
