What particularly annoys me about this administration and their ilk is their generally asshole tendencies, including a general lack of humility. This is deemed as weak, even when it is clearly a good idea to use some. For instance, a talking point is that we should not get into a "blame game" (unless anonymous administration sources are involved or local officials are targeted*) about the poor federal response. The true leader would accept that some things went wrong, counsel calm, and pledge to do all that they could do to handle the situation -- welcoming constructive criticism in the process.
But, we have the head of FEMA, the Dept. of Homeland Security, and so on refusing to do this. You know, assholes. The head of Homeland Security -- who pursuant to a pending law was supposed to move up eight or so slots in the line of presidential succession - is a questionable sort anyway. The person had a lifetime appointment to the federal appeals bench, one that had nice retirement benefits so that even a ten year stint would set him up for life, but he steps down to head a clearly thankless job under President Bush. Is he some kind of idiot?
I guess he did so for reasons of public service, but if this is how he is going to handle things, maybe he should have staid on the bench -- where he was but one of three in most cases.
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* In a particularly egregious move, worthy of our scorn, the Washington Post (Newsweek cited it unsourced) used said sources (an unidentified "senior Bush official"), in respect to the claimed delay (not true) of local officials to call a state of emergency. The WP corrected the error, but did not out the sources who lied to them.
The lede of a WP piece on the response did note: "Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management." Again, what "administration officials?" Guess who is running things on the political front at the White House? Yes, you guessed it, Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.