Almost no time?

Hard to believe a Washington Post columnist wrote this:

It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.

Because the commander in chief is also the communicator in chief, when a crisis emerges the nation's eyes turn to him as to no other official. We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant and opens new opportunities for him to regain his standing with the public.

I might agree with that -- if the response to the hurricane weren't almost as big a disaster as the hurricane itself. Instead of a bold show of visionary leadership, which maybe could have made previous signs of political weakness irrelevant, it's just one more example of dangerous incompetence added to an ever-growing pile of mistakes to which the administration will never admit. Instead of deflecting attention away from past mistakes, this shines a spotlight on the notion that, given this administration's record, we must have been crazy to expect anything but failure.

I agree with at least one thing Broder wrote: The rescue operation certainly has Bush's personal stamp all over it.