Dear Mr. President
Please, please do not go to Louisiana. No doubt you will called callous and uncaring by those who hate you but they will criticize if you go or if you don't, so there's no loss in not going. What you will do, by not going, is free the resources that would be spent on you to work for the rescue and recovery work. A helicopter carrying the POTUS over a disaster is one less helicopter available to pluck people from rooftops and one more helicopter using resources such as fuel that can go to recovery vehicles.
So, President Bush, please stay involved, order FEMA to do what needs to be done but don't go to the Gulf Coast.
I also wonder about those who insist the president has to be physically present at the site of a natural disaster. This is magical thinking at its worst. The president is not some heap-big tribal shaman whose presence graces and blesses us in time of trial and tribulation. But then, if you believe in "Gaia" and the new liberal religion of ecology, maybe the President as Heap-Big Shaman isn't really a stretch.