Saving face?

Reading the October 10th addition of TIME magazine, I came across a letter that said "I wish [President Bush] were as interested in helping the country come to grips with [Katrina] as he appears to be in saving his own political skin." (TIME magazine, October 10) I agree that the federal government balked with Katrina, especially in regards to FEMA. But I don't think that Bush has spent much effort in saving his skin, or his parties’ skin for that matter.

The first string of PR mistakes made by the white house was letting Michael Chertoff bitch-slap reporters when they questioned him on Michal Browns decision to step down from directly overseeing FEMA response to Katrina. This only furthered the suspicion that Brown had not done his job correctly. Second, I think Rob Corddry said it best: "I was impressed by [Michael Brown's] wiliness to accept responsibility for how incompetent everyone else was. He candidly admitted he was too trusting, too able, too over skilled to deal with all the retards around him. Overall, Jon, a heartfelt and stirring you-a culpa." (Rob Corddry, the Daily Show) FEMA has no access to ambulances or fire engines. FEMA's only role is to coordinate disaster relief. So, Brown saying that he failed to see the un-coordination in Louisiana is admitting he did not do his job.

To make a bad situation worse, Bush did not even return from vacation until three days after the hurricane hit. I haven’t seen anything the Bush administration has done to save face. It's like Bush handed his cabinet a shovel and said: "Start digging."