I think BeeP's point is that there is enough blame to go around here, no need to single out Bush. And in that regards I agree, as far as I can see there was a nearly universal faliure here.

City, State and Federal authorities all failed here. They didn't take the situation seriously enough, early enough. And then once the storm did hit they failed to adapt or respond effectivly. None of the agencies seem to have had a real plan for dealing with the disaster, nor could they deal with the situation on the ground afterwards. And this was true even for obvious and highly predictable problems, such as looting.

Heck, the federal groups couldn't even handle the publicity correctly. Several spokepeople made blatently false statements about the predictability of the disaster or insensitive comments about the people trapped in New Orleans being partially responsible for what happened to them because they didn't leave.

For his part, Bush failed to treat the situation as a real national disaster till several days afterwards. And once he did realize that he was looking bad, he interrupted the disaster relief to stage some publicity events.

Jay