Rebuilding A Dream

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Yet there are strong arguments--beyond the sentimental ones--in favor of keeping New Orleans where it is. In a piece posted online in the Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, Stratfor chairman George Friedman points out that the Mississippi River is the centerpiece of the nation's internal-waterway transit system and that the ports around New Orleans are the "key exit" of North America. They are located as far north as they can be and still be accessed by oceangoing vessels. And those essential ports require a skilled force--a city--to make them work. "New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure," he writes. "It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist."

And will go on existing. Even Hastert knows that New Orleans isn't going anywhere. In the same interview in which he expressed those doubts about the wisdom of rebuilding New Orleans, the Speaker acknowledged the human impulse to stay put. "We build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures," he said. "And they rebuild too." Then he offered an explanation: "Stubbornness."

In the months to come, as the reconstruction of New Orleans and the wider Gulf region gets under way, look for stubbornness to be the order of the day.

--Reported by Amanda Bower/ San Francisco, Terry McCarthy and Jeffrey Ressner/ Los Angeles and Maggie Sieger and David Thigpen/ Chicago