Jackson Free Press

Good. This is what he should have done in the first place rather than blaming the victims. AP is reporting:

President Bush for the first time took responsibility Tuesday for federal government mistakes in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and suggested the calamity raised broader questions about the government's ability to handle both natural disasters and terror attacks. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," said Bush.

Facing sharp criticism and the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Bush scheduled a speech to the nation from Louisiana for Thursday evening. It will be his fourth trip to the devastated Gulf Coast since the storm struck two weeks ago. It was the closest Bush has come to publicly faulting any federal officials involved in the hurricane response, which has been widely criticized as disjointed and slow. Some federal officials have sought to blame state and local officials for being unprepared to cope with the disaster.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., welcomed Bush's conciliatory remarks. "Accountability at every level is critical, and leadership begins at the top," she said.

Other Democrats were less charitable.

"The season has come for Americans to look homeward ... instead of continuing to spend billions of dollars in Iraq," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.

And Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of moving too slowly in recovering the bodies. The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge.

Meanwhile, R. David Paulison, in his first full day on the job as acting FEMA director, told reporters in Washington the government would step up its efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors now in shelters.

"We're going to get those people out of the shelters, and we're going to move and get them the help they need," Paulison said.

Previous Commentsshow

Maureen Dowd's column today: President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved. He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guant·namo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans. How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office? Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal. Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention. Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast. The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide" who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward. [...] W. has said he prefers to get his information straight up from aides, rather than filtered through newspapers or newscasts. But he surrounds himself with weak sisters who don't have the nerve to break bad news to him, or ideologues with agendas that require warping reality or chuckleheaded cronies like Brownie. The president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment. It's too late.

DonnaLadd

Sep 13 2005

Donna writes: The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." *spit take* Okay, let me get this straight... People are DYING in New Orleans and elsewhere on the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. It's the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Early estimates of casualties (which, thank God, now seem unrealistic, but certainly didn't at the time) had deaths exceeding those of 9/11 by a factor of 3. The president has the opportunity to lead decisively, as he did in the wake of the September 11th attacks, or to drop the ball, as his father did during Hurricane Andrew. It is (a) in a human sense, a dire situation; (b) in a practical sense, a matter that must involve some sort of presidential response; (c) in a political sense, potentially the biggest turning point for Bush in four years--possibly the single most important part of his second-term legacy. And his staff wouldn't tell him about it because he's "cold and snappish"? Never mind Bush; fire those bozos. All of them. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Put them out of the White House in a very public way, and with such gusto as to ensure that they will never themselves hold political office, or work in any future president's administration. Their careers in this industry should be over, now. Let them work in advertising or something. They have no business dealing with life-and-death situations. Cheers, TH

Tom Head

Sep 14 2005

Whoa! Bush admitting failure? Rove must be on a new, prescription cocktail.

kaust

Sep 14 2005

I still can't believe this. They didn't tell the President of the United States that he should respond to a natural disaster because he's "cold and snappish"? I could understand it if they were 9-year-olds, but these are presumably functioning adults. How the hell did that happen? These are the people who guide the president's policymaking decisions, who are helping to craft our antiterrorism strategy, who theoretically do everything for Bush but zip his fly. Frankly, that line scares me more than anything else I've ever heard from or about the Bush administration. And you know that's saying something. Peace, TH

Tom Head

Sep 14 2005

Does he really need his aides to realize there was a crisis and to respond to it? Jeez... Sweden was prepared to respond before our Federal government!

kaust

Sep 14 2005

But yeah, Bush admitting failure was a nice touch. I have to admit that I was surprised and impressed by that. He didn't really have to do it--the 39 percent approval rating would have blown over--but it was what the country needed, and his apology will mitigate his slow response, just as it did for Clinton after the Rwandan genocide. Peace, TH

Tom Head

Sep 14 2005

I think Bush's acceptance of responsibility for his Katrina response blunder is a carefully crafted move made in an attempt to mitigate the significant political damages he is suffering rather than a result of any sort of moral or ethical duty or obligation he is feeling. Poor Dubya- I almost feel sorry for him. First he botches the most significant natural disaster of our lifetimes, and possibly in our country's history, then Colin Powell publicly criticizes Dubya's policy in Iraq (calling his own pre-war UN presentation "the lowest point of [Powell's] life") and also publicly criticizes Dubya's handling of the Katrina aftermath, and then today we have yet more spectacular bloodshed in Iraq . . . which would lead (and has lead) many sane americans to question the direction in which this whole Iraq mess is going. . . along with the obvious realization that we need those troops at home to deal with the matter at hand. But, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

grinder

Sep 14 2005

Image o' the day: Bush Asks Condi for a Bathroom Break

DonnaLadd

Sep 15 2005

NY Times editorial today: When President Bush addresses the country from New Orleans tonight, he will have the opportunity to build on the good beginning he made earlier this week, when he took responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina. In an administration that has hated to acknowledge that it ever does anything wrong, it was refreshing to hear Mr. Bush freely admit that Katrina demonstrated that there is a question about whether the nation is really prepared to respond to a terrorist attack or another natural disaster. It is only by squarely acknowledging past failure that the country will be able to do better in the future. The wording of the president's statement on Tuesday was important, and at least a bit worrisome. Mr. Bush accepted responsibility "to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right," which may suggest that he thinks the jury is still out on what the federal government's role should have been. Obviously, it will take time to completely analyze all of the federal system failures, and no one imagines that the city and state were perfectly prepared for the disaster. But we certainly hope that the president was not taking responsibility for a government that he doesn't really think was responsible. Localities have plenty of duties that are uniquely their own, and if a building catches on fire or a sewer pipe breaks, no one blames the president if the response isn't adequate. But no one community, or even any one state, can protect against hurricanes or vast flooding, any more than a city or state can protect itself against international terrorism. It would be wonderful if the president would take the opportunity tonight to endorse an independent inquiry into the Katrina disaster, similar to the 9/11 commission's work.

DonnaLadd

Sep 15 2005

In the Northside Sun this week, liberal-hunter David Sanders (remember him? the dude who said that "liberals" just adore crime?) goes after the damn liberals for trying to blame the disaster crisis on Bush. He must have filed this story before Mr. Bush came out yesterday and claimed full responsibility, eh? That damn-the-Bush-critics crowd is sounding kinda silly in light of Mr. Bush's comments. Are they saynig he's a "liberal," too, now. You just want to say to those people: Live in the world with the rest of us, not in a space where ideology is everything and someone you voted for can do no wrong. Gross.

DonnaLadd

Sep 15 2005