Poor, poor Dubya: Not only did hurricane Katrina force him to cut his vacation short, but now he has to tell the American people he accepts responsbility for any federal screw-ups in the response to hurricane Katrina.

The horror! The horror! It truly has to have been one of the worst days of Dubya's life.

Some excerpts from the NYT story:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Mr. Bush said in an appearance in the East Room with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq. "I want to know what went right and what went wrong."

In response to a reporter who asked if Americans, in the wake of the hurricane, should be concerned about the government's ability to respond to another disaster or a terrorist attack, Mr. Bush said: "I want to know how to better cooperate with state and local government, to be able to answer that very question that you asked: Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack or another severe storm? And that's a very important question."

Throughout his nearly five years in office, Mr. Bush has resisted publicly acknowledging mistakes or shortcomings, and his willingness in this case to edge up to a buck-stops-here statement, however conditional, was evidence of how shaken his presidency has been by the political fallout from the government's handling of the storm.

It also set the stage for a White House effort to pivot from dealing with urgent rescue and relief efforts to setting out a vision of how the federal government could help rebuild devastated communities and re-establish Mr. Bush's image as a leader. ...

In saying he took responsibility for any failures of the federal response to the storm, Mr. Bush stopped short of acknowledging that he or anyone else had made mistakes. The president has in the past resisted efforts to draw him out about errors in judgment and regrets.

At a news conference in April 2004, he was asked what his biggest mistake had been, and he responded that he was sure he had made some but that he was unable, on the spot, to say what they were. Asked again about mistakes during one of his debates last year with Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush admitted to having made some bad personnel choices.

In his remarks in the East Room on Tuesday, Mr. Bush distinguished between criticizing the way the government responded to the hurricane and the way individuals responded.

The president said that having been down to the Gulf Coast three times, "I'm not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives."

I didn't know anyone was attacking the people who were on the front line of saving lives, but if the President of the United States feels they need defending from all enemies foreign and domestic, who am I to challenge him?