NEW ORLEANS ? Barack Obama on Thursday promised he would not forget the lingering misery of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, on his first, brief visit to the famed jazz city as US president.
Facing claims his stay of less than four hours gave short shrift to pledges to New Orleans he made as a candidate, Obama vowed not to repeat the "failure of government" seen after Hurricane Katrina lashed the city in 2005.
"The government was not adequately prepared, and did not adequately respond," Obama said, just over four years after the Katrina's storm surge engulfed 80 percent of the city, leaving tens of thousands homeless.
The botched government response to the storm became an emblem of incompetence which ex-president George W. Bush was never able to shake. Obama vowed a Katrina-like disaster would not be allowed on his watch.
"I promise you this, whether it's me coming down here, or my Cabinet or other members of my administration -- we will never forget about New Orleans," Obama said at a town hall meeting at the University of New Orleans.
"We will not forget about the Gulf Coast. Together we will rebuild this region and we will build it stronger than before."
When he opened the meeting to questions, Obama was asked by one man why federal money was still sluggish in flowing to New Orleans.
"I mean, I expected as much from the Bush administration, but why are we still being nickeled and dimed in our recovery?" the man said.
Obama replied that he wished he could just write out a check, but had to fulfill legal processes before money could be disbursed.
"One of the interesting things you find out about being president is everybody will attack you for spending money, unless you're spending it on them," the president said.
Obama reeled off a list of actions his administration had taken in nine months in office, including the appointment of competent officials, and the release of $1.5 billion in funding that had been caught up in red tape.
The president said government action was helping to rebuild roads, bridges, and restoring schools and had dramatically reduced the numbers of people who are still in temporary accommodation four years after the storm.
"So far, we've made good progress," Obama said.
Facing a packed agenda of the economic crisis and health care reform, as well as building foreign policy headaches, Obama is only now getting around to making his first trip to the fabled city since taking office in January.
The president earlier visited Dr Martin Luther King Charter School, the first school to reopen in the Ninth ward of New Orleans, the impoverished, cluttered neighborhood that was among the worst hit by Katrina.
Four years after Katrina, large areas of New Orleans remain deserted, tens of thousands who left after the storm have yet to return, and many people have no permanent accommodation, shut out of their rotting homes.
Damaging gaps in communication and aspiration between state, city and federal governments, exposed in Katrina's aftermath, are also hobbling some recovery projects.
Some experts fretted that Obama should have spent longer in New Orleans.
"I do think they are mismanaging the theater of this thing," said Tulane University history professor Lawrence Powell.
Powell said, "It's not like coming to Omaha (Nebraska). He's playing into this image of a rock star and it's disappointing because I think he's a deeper person than that."
Peter Scharf, professor of public health at Tulane, added: "Being better than George W. Bush is not an accomplishment in New Orleans.
"There is a lot feeling that this is a little bit of a drive-by."
According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, the population of New Orleans stood at 311,853 in 2008 -- down 172,821 people from 2000. Most of the population loss took place after Katrina.
Since July 2008, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has paid out more than $800 million for infrastructure repair projects in the metro area.
But the housing blight endures, with more than 65,888 properties in the city still unoccupied or vacant as of August.
