Yellow Dog

This CNN story notes how Al Gore, with no press attention or staged photo ops, helped airlift 270 Katrina evacuees from New Orleans. It's a pretty remarkable story:

On September 1, three days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, Dr. David Kline, a neurosurgeon who operated on Gore's son, Albert, after a life-threatening auto accident in 1989, was trying to get in touch with Gore. Kline was stranded with patients at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute -- food and water running out, no power, 4 feet of water surrounding the hospital and ... corpses outside," Simon wrote.

Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and agreeing to underwrite the $50,000 each for the two flights. He also recruited two doctors, Spickard and Gore's cousin, retired Col. Dar LaFon, a specialist in internal medicine who once ran the military hospital in Baghdad.

Most critically, Gore worked to cut through government red tape, personally calling Gov. Phil Bredesen to get Tennessee's support and U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta to secure landing rights in New Orleans.

About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in Knoxville on September 3. The second flight, with 130 evacuees, landed the next day in Chattanooga.

This is the mark of a true leader--someone who ACTS instead of trying to act like he cares by touring the region days after the fact.

CNN.com - Gore airlifts victims from New Orleans - Sep 9, 2005