"With no plans, no vision, no leadership, galaxy-sized buckets of money will do NO GOOD. PRIVATE BUSINESS WILL NOT COME."
Bingo! I think the rats' plan is to replace Blank-oh with Breaux the next gube election. At any rate, NOLA is a very long time from being a big city again. It's best hope is to limp along as a port city and get the levees shored up properly with some solid engineering. Until then, no private investors will spend a penny on that sunken mess.
Braux might be a good choice, relatively speaking. He's fairly moderate politically, but has little executive experience that I know of. There's a big difference between pontificatin in the Senate and managing a multi-billion $ operation.
Galveston never recovered from the hurricane of 1900. It, as you say, limped along as a port city until the Port of Houston more or less took even that away. One suspects New Orleans, LA is a bit of living history now.
That could be harsh. They may recover somewhat as a party city, having been spared the loss of the French Quarter, but I think the sprawling masses of people will never return. A good thing, really.