Washed Up President

Johann Hari sums up what most people feel about President Bush and his administration and asks "Could a new American liberalism rise from the fetid waters of New Orleans once again?"

The floods have exposed a washed-up president and his bankrupt philosophy

The drowning of New Orleans seems to be turning in the American public's mind into George Bush's Iranian hostage crisis: a sudden, disastrous event that exposes the President's blundering, stumbling incompetence. It is summarised in one image: the President strumming a guitar before an audience of mega-rich fundraisers, while a few hundred miles away tens of thousands of the poorest Americans were trapped in a disaster movie because they had been too broke to get out of town.

But the events of the past week have been about more than mere administrative incompetence. This isn't Jimmy Carter fumbling and stumbling over how to storm the Tehran embassy; this lets Bush off too easily. This is actually a Winter of Discontent - an event that exposes the flaws in an entire governing philosophy - for Bush's small government conservatism.

I know it seems odd to describe George Bush as following a strict political philosophy. It's hard to imagine him poring over the works of Freidrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. (Indeed, it's hard to imagine him even pronouncing their names.) But both in the years leading up to the floods and in the immediate aftermath, the President has remained glued to a strict ideological script that has - at every step of the way - made the disaster worse.