a failure the likes we have never known

Like all Americans, I have been trying to do what I can do to help hurricane victims. Pray, donate money, spend time at shelters, whatever. The most important thing to happen now is that everyone who needs help gets it.

For the first time today, I stepped back a little bit from the situation and read some things, and frankly it is startling. I have no love for this president. I voted against him both times, voted against him for governor of Texas way back in the day. But I also haven't hated him the way so many seem to. But maybe that is changing.

What has happened in New Orleans in the last couple of weeks is a horrible tragedy, and that a hurricane hit the city is not the fault of anybody. But our government's response has been so ridiculous. It is simply the greatest failure in the history of the United States. I read Andrew Sullivan pretty regularly, and The New Republic, and the New York Times. And the overwhelming, disgusting feeling I get is that this country is being run by Marie Antoinette. Bush is ignoring the situation, then diverting badly needed help for photo opportunities, then off talking about medicare drug benefits. What?!? I have not seen but a thousandth of a percent of the calamity, and it will be with me the rest of my days. And then we find out that the three top officials in FEMA have no emergency management experience. I am sure they are nice guys and great at the country club. But governing is serious business. And it is time for serious people to take up the business again.

The bottom line for me is that the age of endless campaigning must end. The ideological differences between the right and the left are ultimately trivial. What the last generation has left us with is a cadre of politicians who want to be elected but don't want to govern. Say what you will about Bill Clinton, who was surely a flawed president, but at least he would have had a finger on the emotional pulse of the nation. The current president is so out of touch he does not understand that. He is so out of touch.

This must be a watershed moment in the history of our country. There is no choice; we cannot allow this kind of gross incompetence to stand, and we cannot be distracted by what I am sure will be petty blame throwing from one side of the aisle to the other, because it is not like the Democratic politicians are the model of statesmenship. But this must be the time when we say that the era of country club governance is over.