I didn't do it.

Manifesto

From the New York Times story about Karl Rove and Andy Card:

By most accounts inside and outside the administration, Mr. Rove is relentlessly cheerful, presenting himself as an optimistic face in a gloomy White House. One person who met Mr. Rove said he attributed Mr. Bush's problems more to external events, in particular Hurricane Katrina and Iraq, than to anything the White House did wrong.

Does anybody else find the second sentence to be the most depressing thing they have ever read? Katrina and Iraq are "external events" and not "anything the White House did wrong?" I don't know if I'm more depressed about the arrogance of the view expressed by the unnamed White House source (although unsurprising) or that fact that the New York Times has no problem reciting the characterization that Katrina and Iraq are simply "external events" that were imposed on the White House. In simple terms, so we don't have to keep repeating ourselves, nobody is upset about Katrina happened but people are actually upset about the piss-poor response that allowed people to die as a result of the storm, among a myriad other tragedies. As for Iraq, people are rightly pissed about both its occurrence in the first place and the incompetence with which the entire operation has been run. The fact that the White House is framing these as "external events" should give Democrats more spine to run on these issues. But perhaps is it hard to get more of something that you don't have in the first place, with rare exceptions. Anybody else of the view that the Democratic party needs a serious bloodletting? Getting rid of Lieberman would be a good start.