McCain visits New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward

Republican John McCain toured this city’s still-impoverished Lower 9th Ward today, accompanied by dozens of soldiers from the Louisiana National Guard and trailed by a press corps herded onto the flatbeds of two large green cargo trucks.

Accompanied by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate, McCain and his wife Cindy stopped to greet volunteers at the Lisa Jones House, a Christian charity that distributes clothing and food to local residents in need. Initially, the only crew allowed on the street with him during the three-block walk was his campaign film crew, which has been putting together a video montage of this week’s tour of America’s “forgotten places” for the convention.

“Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way it’s been handled,” McCain said in remarks addressed to the people of New Orleans and Louisiana. “History will judge this president,” he said in answer to a question about President Bush’s legacy. “But it will never, ever again happen.”

Democrats criticized McCain’s visit to New Orleans, noting that he’d voted against a spending bill in 2006 that would have provided $28 billion in hurricane relief, and legislation that would have extended unemployment and Medicaid benefits to hurricane victims for several months. The Arizona senator also opposed a commission to study the federal government’s response.

“Touring the 9th Ward with reporters can’t hide the fact that John McCain voted against billions of dollars in Katrina recovery efforts, emergency healthcare for survivors, unemployment assistance for displaced workers, and even the creation of a commission to find out what went wrong,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement. “People in the Gulf Coast can hardly afford four more years of the failed Bush-McCain agenda.”

McCain defended those votes aboard his campaign bus as part of his campaign against wasteful spending, saying the legislation could have led to “waste” and “mismanagement.”

“They were all partisan votes,” McCain said. “I’m proud of my support of American citizens regarding the taxpayers. I will not vote for projects and programs and bills that are laden with pork-barrel projects that waste taxpayers’ dollars … They were full of pork-barrel, wasteful, unnecessary projects and earmarks.”

He opposed the commission, he said, because “there have been many investigations taking place – the causes are well known,” adding he thought most people in America know “what caused that mismanagement.”

Back in Washington, meanwhile, a Senate committee sought to inoculate McCain, who was born on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone, from any inference that he is ineligible to run for the presidency, constitutionally open only to “natural born citizens.”

On a 19-0 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee declared the Arizona Republican eligible for the presidency in a resolution co-sponsored by Democrats and presidential candidates Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. While the non-binding resolution would have no effect on two pending lawsuits on the issue, Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said the measure will “put to rest any speculation that Sen. McCain is not eligible to run for president.”

For his part, McCain said this week that he thinks the legal issue was settled in 1964, when the Republican nominee was Barry Goldwater, who was born in Arizona when that state was still a territory. He also said he thinks the prohibition on foreign-born citizens serving as president should be repealed, citing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a prime reason.

In an interview with WWL-TV in New Orleans that aired Wednesday night, McCain said he realized “there’s a lot more work to do” to restore the city from the devastating 2005 Hurricane Katrina. But the Arizona senator also said Congress should ensure “that the money is spent efficiently and well. That’s a concern for the taxpayers of America.”

Asked if he thought Americans were suffering from “Katrina fatigue,” McCain said that even though the catastrophe is no longer “on the front pages,” its impact will be long remembered. “I think Americans were terribly, terribly disturbed by not only the tragedy itself but by the lack of adequate response, which caused us to see terrible pictures that I don’t think will be erased from our memory for a long time.”

McCain is on the fourth day of his “forgotten places” tour, filled with stops in economically-depressed places like Youngstown, Ohio, and Inez, Ky., that are usually Democratic strongholds. With Democrats Obama and Clinton still slugging it out in the primaries, McCain, who has already clinched the GOP nomination, has been trying to appeal to general election voters.

Asked about his objections to an ad running in North Carolina that depicts Obama as “too extreme” for the state, McCain said he cannot dictate what a state party does. “But I can condemn it, and I can appeal to the overwhelming majority of Republicans in that state to repudiate it,” he said. Noting that “we are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan,” McCain said that though he “cannot enforce my will” on the North Carolina GOP Party, “I will have no part of it.”

The state party chairwoman, Linda Daves, defended the ad, saying she was “just doing my job” by “protecting down-ticket candidates.” Two Democratic candidates for governor in North Carolina have endorsed Obama, and Daves said the Illinois senator’s affiliation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright “calls into question their judgment.” On MSBNC, the Democratic state chairman, Jerry Meek, countered that the ad was “absurd” and “a fundraising tool” for state Republicans, who he said are “desperate. All the momentum’s been in our direction.”

maeve.reston@latimes.com

johanna.neuman@latimes.com

Reston reported from New Orleans, Neuman from Washington.