Who’s Sorry Now

Kevin Drum, noticing the pundits’ amazed tone yesterday, asked last night whether it was true that Bush accepted blame less often than other presidents and noted that Clinton didn’t step up for anything but Lewinsky and that was after months of prevaricating.

I don’t think it’s that other president’s accept blame more often, although some, like JFK, famously did and enhanced their popularity by doing so. The reason why it’s so amazing is that Bush has presided over a terrorist attack on US soil and an intelligence failure of epic proportions in Iraq and has not only failed to take even one iota of responsibility, but actually rewarded the people who dropped the ball. It’s the scope of his errors that sets his unwillingness to take responsibility on a different level than other presidents.

There are many ways that presidents admit responsibility besides publicly issuing the big mea culpa. Clinton fired people and withdrew nominations and did many things in response to public outcry. He changed course when it was clear things weren’t working and announced it publicly. Bush, on the other hand, goes out of his way to pretend that he is “staying the course” even when he has quite obviously changed it. His unwillingness to even admit a small change in policy is absolute. His stubbornness on more petty matters such as his insistence on installing John Bolton at the UN just reinforces the fact that he is not only incapable of admitting a mistake or taking responsibility for his administration’s failures — he will use raw political power to get his way even when he’s clearly wrong.

The response to Katrina is just the latest in a series of epic mistakes. And the shock isn’t that he’s finally admitted that he, as president, bears some responsibility for the failures of this latest cock-up — it’s that it’s the first time political conditions have been such that he was required to do so.

It would appear that after hearing four years of “we could never have imagined” and “if we’d known we would have moved heaven and earth” and “stuff happens” people finally (if temporarily) awakened to the idea that these guys are fuck-ups. His approval ratings were sliding so precipitously that they obviously felt they had to try to stop the bleeding in some novel new way — letting buck stop (sort of) at the president. It may very well be too late though. The cumulative effect of all those excuses and stubborn refusals to admit wrongdoing may be overwhelming now.

This speech Thursday night had better be good.

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