When he ran for president in 2000, George W. Bush said he would not engage in nation-building. Other than reconstructing Iraq, he wasn't kidding. Not a word in last night's State of the Union address about the lost American city, New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.

According to Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) - New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina's strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush's attention on the year's biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

In the president's State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.

By contrast, in the days ahead of the president's address, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia compared the U.S. money being spent on Iraqi reconstruction with the fraction committed to the Gulf Coast rebuilding. And, chosen to give the Democratic response to Bush on Tuesday, Webb brought up the continuing struggle of Katrina victims right away, listing ``restoring the vitality of New Orleans'' just behind education and health care among his party's most pressing priorities, according to the text of his speech distributed in advance.

The irony of it all is that if Bush promised some kind of Marshall Plan to rebuild New Orleans, the public would probably go along with it. Who can forget those terrible images of people living in the squalid Superdome or watching their houses wash away in the flood which swallowed the city? Apparently everyone forgot, or at least Bush's speechwriters. While Bob Herbert of the New York Times continues to write about the tragedy, New Orleans had its day in the news, and Hurricane Katrina was sooo 2005. We are a disposable society and yesterday's tragedy makes room for new ones.