NYTimes on Bush
September 1 editorial:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end....nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

Contrary to most days, I find no pleasure in the floundering President today. Like most of the country, I am waiting for someone, anyone, to lead this crisis management in a visibly confident, competent way. Instead what we get is a President who can only be described as out-of-it, with a FEMA director who actually got on Larry King Live last night and said this (with a straight face):

When I became the director of FEMA a couple of years ago, I decided it was time we did some really serious catastrophic disaster planning. So, the president gave me money through our budget to do that. And we went around the country to figure out what's the best model we can do for a catastrophic disaster in this country? And we picked New Orleans, Louisiana, being struck dead on by a cat five hurricane.

This did not happen in this event. But that cat 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it.

Larry's hard-hitting response? "Thank you, Mike."