Obama in Joplin: More empty promises to disaster survivors
President Obama’s visit to Joplin, Missouri Sunday was his third tour in a month at the site of a monumental natural disaster. He visited Tuscaloosa, Alabama April 29 after a spate of tornadoes struck across the South, then spoke with victims of the Mississippi River flooding in Memphis, Tennessee May 16.
The appearances follow what is now an established ritual. The president arrives and is shown scenes of devastation by local dignitaries. He shakes hands with disaster relief workers and hugs survivors. He then speaks before a local audience assembled for the purpose, usually invoking religious consolation and promising federal aid. And a few hours afterwards, he is gone, the survivors soldier on, the television cameras turn away, and the federal response remains pathetically inadequate to the scale of the human suffering and material damage inflicted in the catastrophe.