NY Times Eviscerates Bush

Ouch:

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.

…[N]othing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

[…]

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

I heard just an excerpt of this speech on the radio this morning, and I was appalled—even by Bush’s standards, it was just unbelievably bad. Among a string of empty platitudes, he was stumbling to describe what he’d seen in his flyover, and while that’s totally understandable, he was chuckling, perhaps at his own inability to verbalize what he’d seen, but it was still dreadfully inappropriate. And what he could manage to get out was presented as though he was ticking off a list of what he’d seen, with very little emotion. If the rest of his speech was even half as bad as what I heard, the Times isn’t wrong in deeming it one of his worst speeches ever.