A Couple of Hugs...

So now, Bush, five days late and a good few dollars short, you find the time to turn up and step off your helicopter for just long enough to hand out a few bottles of water and a couple of hugs for the TV cameras. You even manage a few tears of sympathy.

Forgive my cynicism, Bush, but this is hogwash. At best it awards you a small badge for sentimentality. Personally, I'm not buying any of this soap until it comes with the necessary words and deeds. I need you to stand up and say it out loud: "It's time for the people of this country to make sacrifices. It's time for us all to recognize the ravages of poverty and neglect in our own country, here at home, and the damage that they have done to our national psyche." (If you'd prefer it, Bush, feel free to use the word "soul": it's just as good.) "It's time to review our priorities," you could continue, "and return to the real 'hard work' of government: not cutting taxes and lavishing cash on useless projects, but providing the basic services our people need. It's time to repair that shredded safety net."

As for me, I'll begin to believe you when you go on television to publicly disavow that absurd estate tax cut that's next up on the congressional table, and to reinstate some of those other taxes that you've slashed--to the benefit of none but the wealthiest of your friends. I'll begin to believe you when you can learn to admit to a mistake when you make one--and you have made many, Bush, in the eyes of most Americans--and when you take action to correct it. I'll begin to believe you when you stop making excuses for the bungling of your top executives and send a few of them packing. You could start with your Rumsfeld, whose inept handling of the Iraq war, from its very start, has left us in the current quagmire there. And next in line would be your Michael Brown, who as head of your Federal Emergency Management Agency, has done a royal job of screwing up emergency aid to the victims of Katrina. You can't really think, Bush--can you?--that this man has done "a heck of a job." But then, you probably think that you, too, are doing a heck of a job.

And I'll begin to believe you when your officials stop firing--no, rehire--some of those good people who have tried to warn you, and the American people, of imminent dangers or patent abuses of the public trust, and whose dismissal from their posts you have tolerated. I'll begin to believe you when you cut the rhetoric and talk to us like a man, unafraid of the consequences of speaking the truth. I'll begin to believe you when you look me straight in the eye, without that shifty avoidance and without that smirk.

I'll know when to begin to believe you, because I'll hear it in your voice. Until that time, Bush, don't ask for any more slack from me. Don't hand me any more of your lame excuses. Don't try to tell me that no-one could have anticipated the destruction we've just witnessed in New Orleans. It's not true. It's another in the long list of untruths that you have been responsible for. And I for one can't tolerate your refusal or your inability to see the plain truth in front of you and tell it, as they used to say, like it is.