Oily character

Quite right that Bush would be more in the way in New Orleans than any help; quite right that he's so inept in unscripted events that he would harm his prospects by rushing off there or to D.C. Sitting on his hiney after the fact might have been a good idea. That doesn't mean that he didn't make any mistakes.

The key mistakes here (and Bush errors are legion) are Bush taking more vacation time than any president since Coolidge and being more of a stubborn jackass than any since LBJ. Eventually, a majority of Americans will stop forgiving him for these things, and Katrina simply accelerates that date by shining a hot spotlight on both (the latter in the fact that he actually had more to say about looting than about the sorrow).

Look, he's a loser who happened to have enough money to buy a win. Fine; settled. It's the repeated demonstration of this fact that is annoying the hell out of me. Did he really have to open his trap and say, "I don't think anyone could have anticipated the breach of the levees"?

Finally: when I saw Oil Storm on the FX channel a few weeks ago, I thought, damn straight—that's the path we're headed down. Folks, we just reached the first landmark on that path.