When my wife was in school in Louisiana, she had a teacher who began a sentence one day with, “When you leave Louisiana and go to America . . .”
Now, Louisiana has long been different from the rest of the country, its French and Spanish colonial roots long pre-dating Anglo influence. In south Louisiana in particular, where the geographic isolation of bayou country was not penetrated until the commercialization of oil and gas deposits well into the 20th century, the Anglo influence not only came late but often came as unwelcome.
So there is precedent for Louisiana to consider itself a land apart, but I’m not sure there is any precedent for a President of the United States to refer to contiguous U.S. territory as if it were a foreign land in quite the same way President Bush did yesterday while visiting New Orleans on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall there:
“[T]he taxpayers and people from all around the country have got to understand the people of this part of the world really do appreciate the fact that the American citizens are supportive of the recovery effort.”
“I come telling the folks in this part of the world that we still understand there’s problems and we’re still engaged.”
“We care deeply about the folks in this part of the world.”
He might as well have been talking to tsunami survivors in Indonesia.
Late Update: As a couple of readers have pointed out, there is a precedent for a U.S. President to refer to U.S. territory in this way: President Bush himself has done it consistently since shortly after the storm. On September 2, 2005, speaking in Mobile, Ala., the President said, “[N]ow we’re going to go try to comfort people in that part of the world.” And the pattern of oddly distancing the devastated Gulf Coast from the rest of the country has continued ever since, as ably documented by the blog “Right Hand Thief.”
