George W. Bush's legacy was permanently damaged by the perception, largely created by his political adversaries, that he didn't care enough about New Orleans when the city was struck by Katrina.

But flash forward to flooding in Baton Rouge. Jim Geraghty begins his invaluable Morning Jolt today with some observations about this natural disaster:  

Rod Dreher is right in the middle of the floods in Louisiana, and is writing with increasing rage about how this corner of the country can be devastated by a natural disaster again and the rest of the country is, by and large, ignoring it.

Hillary devoted three times that number of tweets to congratulating US women athletes at the Rio games. Hey, I have no problem with celebrating their victories. But let’s see: over 100,000 people have lost their homes in Louisiana. More than half of them are women, it stands to reason. This is not a secret. If you want to win the attention of the Democratic nominee for president, it’s much better to be a woman athlete than a Louisiana woman made homeless by the flooding, it would appear.

To his credit, the president has released disaster aid to Louisiana, and has sent the FEMA chief down. But he is not interrupting his vacation on fancy Martha’s Vineyard to come give comfort and show compassion to his own countrymen who are in extreme pain.

Despite George W. Bush’s folly on Katrina, which left a permanent mark on his legacy, Obama remains on vacation, just as Bush did.

What is the president doing?

President Barack Obama did something unusual during his summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard: He went out on the town four nights in a row.

After a better part of a decade of using this breezy Massachusetts island as a low-key, quiet summer retreat, Obama has picked up the pace this year. In his final summer vacation as president, Obama has spent almost every night of his escape painting its towns red — so to speak.

The stunner came late Sunday when the president assembled his security and press entourage to go out at nearly 11 p.m. It was a move all but impossible to imagine happening in Washington, where Obama’s occasional social outings tend to begin much earlier.

USA Today notices that the presidential candidates have barely mentioned the floods.

Obama hasn't even bothered to fly over the terrain to get a look at the devastation.

We live in an increasingly gilded age when politicians are more interested in the high life than in the citizenry (except of course when these inferiors have to be wooed for votes).

If a Republican president treated the Baton Rouge situation so off-handedly, there would be hell to pay–as there should. Oh, yes, and even the weather is politicized.