By BOB HERBERT
We should be used to it by now. There are a couple of Congressional committees trying to investigate the tragic Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the Bush administration is refusing to turn over certain documents or allow certain senior White House officials to testify before the committees under oath.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is by no means unfriendly to the Bush crowd, said this week, 'There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do.'
Once again the president has, in effect, flipped the bird at Congress. He's amazing. Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers. George W. Bush does what he wants to do. He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation. He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself %u2014 a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam %u2014 as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war.
Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush. The administration's high-handedness with the Katrina investigators comes at the same time as disclosures showing that the White House was warned in the hours just before the hurricane hit New Orleans that it might well cause catastrophic flooding and the breaching of the city's levees.
That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29. On Sept. 1, with the city all but completely underwater, the president went on television and blithely declared, 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.'
This guy is something. Remember his 'Top Gun' moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? And his famous taunt %u2014 'Bring 'em on' %u2014 to the insurgents in Iraq? His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence. And that's the real problem. That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence.
Fantasy may be in fashion. Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on Mr. Bush's watch. But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time. Many thousands of people %u2014 men, women and children %u2014 have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies."