It's Karl Rove's firing all over again.
You'll recall that Bush first said if anyone on his staff had anything to do with leaking Valerie Plame's name they'd be fired. Then when Rove's attorney said it was Karl, Bush changed his story to "anyone convicted of a crime" would be fired (which put to rest lingering concerns of whether the White House would keep prison inmates on its payrolls - phew!)
Well, today Bush backed off his previous mea culpas for his disastrous handling of the Katrina mess. Earlier Bush took responsibility for the mess. But now, according to Reuters, he's only taking responsibility if the GOP Congress finds that he did anything wrong.
As he has in the past, Bush said if a congressional investigation finds the federal government was at fault in the initial response to Katrina, he would accept responsibility.IF he didn't respond well enough? You mean, Bush still believes it was the right decision to stay on vacation for 3 days into the disaster? Bush still thinks he did nothing wrong? Bush still thinks Brownie did a heck of a job? Bush has reached no conclusions whatseover about how the relief effort went? And more importantly, so Bush didn't take responsibility for the disaster several weeks ago when he did his speech down in New Orleans, and CLAIMED he did take responsibility.
"I do my job as best I can. One of the things that we do is we respond to crisis. And as I told the people, if I didn't respond well enough, we're going to learn the lessons," he said.
Or more likely, Bush did take responsibility and now he's recanted. Or to put it another way, Bush was for taking responsibility before he was against it.
Perhaps what Bush meant was that he'll take responsibility if he's convicted of a crime. Well, that day may be coming soon.
