“BUSH’S brain” was missing when flood waters swamped New Orleans. Karl Rove, the White House aide who goes by that unofficial title, was suffering from painful kidney stones and was briefly hospitalised in the middle of the biggest crisis so far of President George W Bush’s second term.

Once his condition improved it was Rove who urged the president to open his chequebook for the stricken city, against the advice of White House economists, and spend $200 billion (£111 billion) to rebuild it “higher and better”, as Bush went on to promise.

Although many Republicans are horrified by the cost, Rove is determined to revive Bush’s dormant image as a compassionate conservative, the theme of his first presidential campaign in 2000, and will be overseeing the reconstruction effort.

Bill Kristol, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, said Rove’s absence had made a significant difference after the hurricane hit. “He was out of commission for 24-36 hours and he’s indispensable. It’s a thin White House and it’s not a good thing that the government could become paralysed for a day,” Kristol said.

There were fresh signs of recovery in New Orleans yesterday, where displaced residents streamed back to check their homes and belongings and join in the clean-up.

Among them was Brad Higgins, 23, who used to work as a sales assistant on a glossy lifestyle magazine and had spent the last two days helping clear a wrecked office building.

“If they want this city to come back, they need us all back in here doing our bit,” he said, pausing for a lunchtime drink at Johnny White’s, the only bar in town that remained open during the hurricane crisis.

Others were more preoccupied with looking for their pets — although Peter Everett, a trainee fireman, who paddled back to his still flooded house in the Lakeview neighbourhood, said Scrappy, his baby alligator, had vanished.

Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, said British officials had now been to “every address where we’ve had any indication that a Briton might be there”. The death of an elderly British woman has been confirmed and 71 Britons are reported missing, although they may not have been in the area.

“Our people have been wading around in toxic water guided by people trying to point out where a road is,” Triesman said. “It is possible that some were drowned who we don’t know about.”

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state who grew up in the segregated South, has become the most prominent champion of a comprehensive anti-poverty campaign in Katrina’s wake. She said the South had a problem with “persistent poverty”, but dismissed allegations that racism was to blame for Bush’s tardy reaction.

Bush also sought to reject charges of racism by asking T D Jakes, a black evangelist with close links to the Republicans, to deliver the sermon of remembrance for the victims of Katrina held in Washington last week. Some churchmen were outraged by what they regarded as a blatantly political choice of preacher.

One New Orleans clergyman, whose home was flooded, refused to attend. “I didn’t have the stomach for it. I didn’t want to hear a black right-wing friend of Bush,” he said.

Kristol said he hoped Bush had not talked himself into believing his legacy depended on his reponse to the hurricane. “The truth is Bush’s legacy will be determined by Iraq,” he said.

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