Bush full of praise for Gulf's renewal

GULFPORT, Miss. — President Bush praised "a sense of renewal" along the Gulf Coast Monday as he toured the slowly rebounding region nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in Mississippi and New Orleans.

But a walk in Biloxi took him past the barren, sandy lots of flooded homes that have been razed. He stopped at a home being rebuilt and drove past government trailers still housing thousands of residents.

"I feel a quiet sense of determination that's going to shape the future of Mississippi," said Bush, speaking to a small crowd on a half-vacant Biloxi street corner.

"We understand that people are still anxious. We understand that people hear about help and wonder where it is," Bush said, with an address aimed at a broader Gulf Coast audience and indeed a wary national audience as he heads for an anniversary church service Tuesday morning in the square of New Orleans where he pledged nearly a year ago to rebuild the region.

"Optimism is the only option," the president said Monday, pledging that the federal government will not leave the Gulf region until a rebuilding that has already consumed more than $110 billion of pledged federal money is complete. "We'll stand by you as long as it takes to get the job done."

Critics of the government's rebuilding program say it is not simply the time it has taken to clear the debris left by Katrina. They say the Bush administration has shown no signs of readiness to fulfill the president's commitment to address racial inequities in the region that were exposed by the crisis and to help impoverished survivors build new businesses and become homeowners as well.

The White House could not disagree with its critics more. With the president and first lady Laura Bush returning to this region for a two-day tour that includes briefings on recovery efforts, lunch with the governor of Mississippi and dinner with the mayor of New Orleans on Monday and a memorial service at St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square on Tuesday, they have been here 22 times between them since Katrina first struck.

But the White House is beginning to frame a longer-term prediction for the region's recovery than the one that the president voiced last year.

On Sept. 5, 2005, when he toured the ruins of Poplarville, Miss., Bush said: "I'd like to come back down here in about two years and walk your streets and see how vital this part of the world is going to be."

On Monday, Bush was talking about a more distant future. He was asked during an interview aboard Air Force One en route to the Gulf Coast: How much of the region's destruction, realistically, will be permanent?