Faced with two severe tests of character and competence, one natural, one man-made, our unduly elected leader proved himself desperately unequal to the challenges.

Yet there he is, strutting through the less devastated parts of the Gulf Coast trying to convince Katrina's victims that they're not as bad off as they think, and flying around the nation trying to convince us that we're safer now than we were five years ago.

As if a lying idiot saying something makes it so.

The murderer who Bush once said was "wanted dead or alive" remains free to plot and finance further abominations; indeed, it seems we haven't had a reliable lead on him in more than two years -- about when Bush pulled resources out of Afghanistan and off the hunt to waste them in the useless war on Iraq. Now he solemnly lays wreaths at Ground Zero, then attends a remembrance service at a nearby church. (He certainly should thank the Lord for 9/11. It's certainly been a Godsend for him and his party -- the only card hateful, shameless hypocrites have to play.)

Think about the Bush record: Secret torture camps. Illegal domestic eavesdropping. CIA agents deliberately exposed. Osama bin Laden deliberately neglected. A resurgent Taliban. Nearly 2700 Americans needlessly killed in a country we illegally invaded for, as we know now and should have seen then, nothing. American prestige and influence at record lows. Anti-American hostility at record highs. Our citizens reduced to dumping their toothpaste in airport trash cans. Our nation more bitterly polarized than at any time since the '60s.

And as for Katrina, the other disaster to hit during this disastrous presidency, one word is now the universally accepted shorthand for the Bush response: "botched."

John F. Kennedy faced two major crises during his three years in office: the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. He got one out of two right and took full responsibility for the one he got wrong. George W. Bush has also faced two major crises, with much more time to deal with them. He got both painfully wrong and resolutely declined to take responsibility for either (the buck stops on Michael Brown's desk, or on the Democratic side of the aisle, or at foreign intelligence agencies) -- while weakening our military and squandering huge surpluses of domestic revenue and international good will.

I therefore ask again, as I have asked before, for someone, anyone, to explain how it is that people still show up and applaud at Bush's public appearances; how journalists can ask him questions and keep a straight face at his inarticulate, dissembling responses; how, if God truly does bless America, JFK could have his head blown off while the scariest threat to W's health was a pretzel he was chewing on.

Let Bush tout the "progress" in New Orleans and his so-called "war on terror." Even his staunchest defenders now shrug and giggle when asked, as Joe Scarborough asked, if Bush is an idiot. And the American people know now what a horrible mistake they made in allowing this rodeo clown into the White House -- too late to do anything about it, unfortunately, but just in time to end his party's majority in Congress.

Seven weeks till election day.