L.A. Times' Brownstein - Buck stops with Bush

The White House is, naturally, engaged in a savage push-back against its critics. However, the odor in the air wafting down from Washington is one of death and decay. The Bush presidency is, for all intents and purposes, over.

Ron Brownstein, in the pages of the L.A. Times, gets it just right.

President Bush is probably even more resistant than most of his predecessors to admitting error or reexamining decisions.

This is a man, after all, who once famously blanked at a news conference when asked to identify his biggest post-9/11 mistake, and who later draped the nation's highest civilian honor on the CIA director who told him that the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a "slam dunk."

All of this helps explain why White House and Department of Homeland Security officials initially insisted last week that they had done everything they could, as quickly as they could, to help those in need in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast.

But the national interest demands that the president now rise above that defensive crouch. After a week of despair, suffering and terrifying chaos in New Orleans, this is a moment for the president to be knocking heads, demanding answers and imposing changes throughout the federal government.

However, even in the harsh light of the morning after, Bush can think still of nothing but himself.

The Post's Dan Froomkin reports on the above-mentioned White House push-back:

This campaign is to salvage Bush's reputation.

Like previous Rove operations, it calls for multiple appearances by the president in controlled environments in which he can appear leader-like. It calls for extensive use of Air Force One and a massive deployment of spinners.

It doesn't necessarily include any change in policy. It certainly doesn't include any admission of error.

It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent.

It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the "blame game." While at the same time, it is utterly political in nature and heavily reliant on shifting the blame elsewhere.

Has there ever been so pathetic and shameful an excuse for a public servant as George W. Bush? Oh, my God. Enough is enough.

Resign, Mr. President. Put your administration out of its misery. Please let us off the hook for your reelection. We beg the Lord's forgiveness for our part in facilitating this horror. We didn't work hard enough to defeat you. We accept the responsibility for that. We repent.

Just go. Take Vice-president Cheney with you. We'll make do with Chairman Hastert for the next 3-and-a-half years. Then, we'll get rid of him and elect someone with a genuine heart for public service. We'll elect a president who loves Americans more than he loves some demented, retrograde notion of "America."

Please, Mr. President. Get out before you kill us all with your demonstrably lethal blend of incompetence, disinterest and evil.

Go back to your estate outside of Crawford and clear brush to your heart's contentment. Move to Kennebunkport and spend the rest of your days golfing, or whatever it is people like you do when they don't have jobs. Join up with your dad at the whatever-it-is Group and become a billionaire selling things to Saudi Arabia. Whatever.

Please, just go away.