What he says and what he does.

Since the last election I must admit I have studiously avoided listening to George W. Bush speak. There is no point in belaboring the point that is made so clear on other blogs - the man has no integrity. What he says and what he does have never had much more than a passing acquaintance and after he got the job for another term, somehow, I saw no reason to pain myself with the irrelevance of his words. I got it in the first four years: If he said he would have a humble foreign policy - it meant we would invade a country that did not attack us. If he said the economy was growing, he meant the very rich were doing great and their help will now shop at Walmart more - so what's the problem? If he said he was for small government he meant that he was going to add a huge drug benefit to Medicare to get votes. No Child Left Behind meant Every Educator accosted with Erroneous Testing. Being decisive means every single decision has been delegated. And so it went, and goes.

I always have the remote handy if the TV is on.

Katrina was the exception. I listened last night. I was flabbergasted. W morphed. He seemed, at least at moments, to have turned into an big old expansive LBJ liberal. He promised the moon and implied that the moon was essentially a God given right for Americans anyway. We, as a nation, were going to throw our collective arms around our peeps on the Gulf coast and the Federal Government was going to be those arms. A New Deal indeed. I do not work under the handicap of believing that he means any of it. But for one night I thought maybe, just maybe, he meant SOME of it. Of course, by this morning, when he said all that cash was going to come from "cuts" in the budget - it was clear that he meant none of it. It was, as it always is with him, a stunt. The Bush part of the recovery effort is now over. He made a speech, said what Karl Rove told him to. The details will be kicked around, somehow the gulf coast will get through.

The current Bush presidency is, in effect, over. It peaked right after the 2004 election, and began the downward slope the moment he took sides in the Shiavo dispute. That was the moment everyone who had not paid him any attention thought "He did WHAT?"

They blew it with Katrina - and as friend said "There isn't a bottle of White-out big enough to cover this one up." After 3 weeks of blame, political machinations, and embarrassing statements the disconnect between what he says he does and what he actually does is just too great. The same friend also said last night " Of course he promised all that money, without asking for sacrifice. That's what people do who have never paid for anything in their lives."

W's poll numbers may drift up a bit here and there. But they will never return to what they once were. Nor should they. This month Bush earned our distrust.

My remote remains handy.