McCain Campaigns With Huckabee Today
John McCain will be joined by former rival Mike Huckabee as he wraps up his "Time for Action" tour today.
McCain will meet up with Huckabee in Little Rock, Ark., and Huckabee will attend McCain's events in Arkansas today: an address to students at Arkansas Baptist College as well as a fund-raiser.
Last night McCain spoke in Baton Rouge, La., where he slammed the government for not always observing standards of "efficiency, common sense and honesty."
"At both the state and federal level, government has been known to act in an arbitrary, inflexible, and irresponsible manner, indifferent to the wishes of the people it is supposed to serve," he said.
"All of this is bad enough in the day-to-day routine of many federal departments and agencies, in the confusion and air of futility that often hangs over their work. But the ineptitude of government can have far graver consequences, as the people of this state know better than anyone, from events still fresh in memory," he said in reference to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster.
"As to the overall performance of government during and after the crisis, the verdict is in, and first impressions were correct. With many thousands of lives in the balance, across 90,000 square miles of misery, there was a failure of foresight, a failure of planning, a failure in execution and a failure in follow-up. And the incompetence of leadership didn't end with the rescue efforts. In the conduct of Congress in the year after Katrina and Rita, we saw the same excesses, lack of focus, and short-term thinking that left New Orleans vulnerable in the first place. As one critic observed, while the hurricanes "proved to be the worst and costliest natural disaster in our history, the waste and fraud uncovered ... has been a disaster all in itself."
McCain spoke of his tour through the Lower Ninth Ward yesterday and promised reform when he's president. "They need jobs there, and job training and good wages," he said. "I assure you that more reforms are on the way if I am given the privilege of serving as president of the United States."