"Earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response"

Whew! As if the fact that President Bush is the worst president ever weren't already apparent, now that the hearings on the miserable government response to Hurricane Katrina are over, can we now start the hearings on the miserable government response to the post-Katrina crisis.

WAPO:

Hurricane Katrina exposed the U.S. government's failure to learn the lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as leaders from President Bush down disregarded ample warnings of the threat to New Orleans and did not execute emergency plans or share information that would have saved lives, according to a blistering report by House investigators. ...

The 600-plus-page report lays primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides, singling out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Operations Center and the White House Homeland Security Council, according to a 60-page summary of the document obtained by The Washington Post. Regarding Bush, the report found that "earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response" because he alone could have cut through all bureaucratic resistance.

I've said it on PGR many times before -- forget the debate about levee board consolidation, making local government more efficient, how to pay for coastal restoration and levee improvements -- all of those problems would melt away and be solved if Bush were more pro-active. As John Barry said at the last week's "After the Storm" forum at Loyola University, "if he really wanted to do something, it would happen overnight." Instead, Bush gave us Donald Powell, a timid little penny-counting accountant with no vision or savvy.