popular thinking

"Bushie, you're doing a heckuva job!"

That's all I can say after watching the 10 p.m. newscast tonight on FOX 25, which included this nugget from our president, which he delivered to the media today after surveying the scene in New Orleans -- TWO WEEKS after Hurricane Katrina.

And we quote verbatim: "My impression of (pause) New Orleans is this, that, uh, there is a (pause) recovery on the way, there is progress being made, but there's a lotta, a lotta serious and hard work that's yet to be done."

That's the best he could do after two weeks. Even in print with the non-comma pauses added, you still don't see the eye-blinking and lip-pursing and other body language -- which W. himself holds to be a very important indicator of other people's credibility -- that demonstrates just how out of his element the president is here. He really doesn't know what to do or what to say. That's not exactly comforting. What happened to the rough-and-tumble cowboy who rebounded from his initial failure on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, to grab the Big Apple by the bullhorn and rally our nation as one? Where did that guy go? He was not in New Orleans today. Mike "Can't Lead a Horse Show to Water" Brown may have resigned from FEMA, but that doesn't fix the problem where, as Harry S Truman was wont to say, the buck is supposed to stop.