Recovery.(HURRICANE KATRINA)

PRESIDENT BUSH'S speech from Jackson Square in New Orleans sketched his program for recovery from Hurricane Katrina. "We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.... There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again." Bold words; how will they be made real?

The flower of a great city is its culture, style, and soul. But these have to be nourished by economic roots. The roots of New Orleans were rotting long before Katrina hit. New Orleans's destiny is to be one of the continent's premier ports, handling grain and oil. Its trade- and production-based job sector lagged behind Houston's, however--and its unemployed underclass swelled. The city fathers of New Orleans, when they weren't stealing, were placing their hopes in tourism, a low-wage sector. If New Orleans is to be something other than an R-rated Williamsburg of food and music, it has to look to basics.

Looking to basics will help the poor. The storm fell most heavily on them; if the recovery is not to fall heavily on them, they must have jobs. Bush's proposal to create Worker Recovery Accounts--$5,000 federal nest eggs that would pay for job training or education--is a good idea. But then the poor must have something to do with their skills. Otherwise low-income rebuilding will just create what urbanologist Joel Kotkin calls "Gazas on the Gulf"--new warehousing for old hopelessness. Better the poor relocate than be shunted back into such dead-ends.

Bush's expansive speech was an effort to ...