Admitting the problem is the first step

I’ve avoided pointing fingers for the Katrina aftermath and, although I felt the local response was more critical and thus more responsible, the federal response was also deeply inadequate. Today, President Bush stated the obvious:

Bush on Tuesday accepted responsibility for failures in the government's response to Katrina and admitted "serious problems" with the handling of the response to the storm that struck the Gulf Coast more than two weeks ago.
"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.
"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

There’s a reason that President Bush’s job approval rating has maintained a solid floor of around 50% (now around 42%) and it’s the same justification that got him re-elected: above all else, Bush was supposed to be the President to “keep us safe.” New Orleans exposed that the federal response to natural disaster was not what the American public required, expected or deserved. But worse than that, Katrina made it clear that Homeland Security appears to be completely unprepared for the exigencies of a terrorist attack since they couldn’t even address a problem known to be heading our way.

Look at these two quotes from an article (linked below) on NASCAR dads:

I asked him, "So you vote Republican?" "Yep," he replied. "Always?" "Pretty much." "So you like Bush?" "Before or after the hurricane?"

Anyway, I found out he was a big Bush supporter but that he too was sorely disappointed with the president's hurricane response. Two men don't make a Gallup poll, but I found this interesting.

Hey, everybody who reads this blog knows I’m a huge Bush booster. I posted daily on Blogs for Bush every day before the election. But the Gulf Coast demanded an overwhelming influx of men, machines, and material and the federal government dropped the ball. Above all, President Bush needs to make this right.

[Side note: if there’s one saving grace for Bush is that he’s been blessed with a feckless opposition party, from Harry Reid to the completely wacked Mary Landrieu.]