Well, You Know. What Are You Gonna Do.

Bad stuff sometimes happens. What's the big deal and stuff?

Geraghty:

A lot of righties feel like George W. Bush got an unearned share of the blame for the Katrina mess; Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco largely ignored pre-written evacuation plans and procedures during the critical hours. School buses were left unused. Several hundred cops walked off the job in the middle of the crisis. Yet somehow the lesson became, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” as we were informed during the charity telethon.

The dominant narrative of Katrina made no room for the normal human errors and snafus that mark any response to a giant problem; righties are naturally objecting to the sudden reinstatement of the “Hey, sometimes stuff happens, what can you do?” standard under a Democratic president.

Obama ran as the anti-Bush; he was supposed to be the embodiment of smarts and savvy and a pledge to get government working again. After almost a year and a half on the job, big government is behaving exactly the way it always has — accepting gifts from those they regulate and watching pornography at work, going whitewater rafting with their wives as part of “official business,” attending Democratic fundraisers, etc. Obama is far too focused on expanding the scope of government to spend much time or effort making sure existing government agencies are performing the duties they already have.