A first time for everything

When I first saw the title of this post, I could only assume that it was a joke. But if it was, the joke appears to be on Bush himself:

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush replied.

I'll note that I disagree with Zaphod in his interpretation of this passage: the reference to terrorism in the interview isn't a justification at all, but rather an admission of even deeper failure. The DHS, for which Bush tried to take credit as the agency capable of keeping Americans safe in response to any threat, failed miserably when it came to Katrina - and the tone of the question and response makes clear that Bush wasn't willing to back up the DHS in its ability to respond to any future terrorist attack either.

In essence, Bush has admitted that despite his constant references to 9/11, he's actually done nothing that he can point to as making people safer, and as a result everything he's done has to be questioned. Needless to say, this is a substantial shift from a man who once maintained that the only mistake in his first term was being insufficiently partisan. And in the aftermath of Katrina, there shouldn't be any lack of people willing to ask the necessary questions.