Perfect storm

The Dems' Hurrican Katrina fury at the Bush Administration's "slow-because-racist response" to the natural disaster and his politically tone-deaf first-day Air Force One flyover of New Orleans put the Roberts confirmation hearings in the back seat. But Bush's response to the criticism, a pledge to spend billions rebuilding a party city that still lies 14 feet below sea level (when most of its residents don't want or plan to return), may turn out to be his biggest political blunder.