The same man who could not get it together enough to provide the people of New Orleans with simple water and blankets and a dry place to huddle during a natural disaster thought nothing of proposing a massive publicly-funded urban rebuilding effort whose cost would exceed that of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.  

What’s the message here, other than that when it is his own image that needs, Bush’s position is “Damn the expense?”

Bush’s ill-considered adventure in Iraq is also beginning to look more and more like a personal matter for him.  Considering how many commonsense warnings he brushed aside going in, and how destitute of a workable plan for managing Iraq in the post-Saddam era he turned out to be, what are we left to conclude, other than that maybe he wanted to avenge Saddam Hussein’s attempt to assassinate his father?  Or that possibly he wanted outdo his father, by finally getting rid of Hussein?  Or that perhaps it was a combination of both?

It is also becoming harder to avoid thinking about the economic opportunities that Bush may have envisioned for his friends in Halliburton and the oil companies.

Whatever his motives may have been, what was clearly not central to him was proper care and stewardship of a public trust.

There was none of the agonizing that other Presidents have gone through over whether the costs and sacrifices of a war were reasonably certain to be outweighed by its anticipated benefits.  There wasn't even a decently thought-through plan for what to do after Hussein had been defeated.  There was just a military machine available, and an opportunity to deploy it.

What we now need to come to grips with is how predictable this all was, based on the attitudes Bush has displayed throughout his public utterances.