An interesting Davenetics post today, highlighting something I’d been vaguely aware of but hadn’t really thought about; the difference between Politics and Governance. Politics is the playing of games; potentially very important games, that determine who gets to do what. Governance is the doing of the what. For all the talk of the media monitoring the government, whether you think it’s left wing, right wing, or just corporatist (I’ll give you a clue; the correct answer is c), we look almost exclusively at the politics of a situation, with the unstated assumption that whoever wins the political battle must have had the best idea, and the right skills to implement it.

Sadly, Katrina proved that wrong. Bush had the best, in the sense of most effective, message in the 2004 campaign, which was basically “I will keep you safe”. That’s a bold claim, and one of the things that follows from it is that he should (I originally put ‘will’, but who am I kidding?) also take blame if you’re not safe. It doesn’t matter if it was really his fault or not; if he said he would keep us safe, and didn’t then move mountains in an attempt to do so, he has failed. And lest you have doubts, appointing a discredited former horse supervisor to be the head of one of the most important agencies in the government doesn’t count as moving mountains.

So we picked someone based on politics, someone who is constantly misunderestimated when it comes to his political skill. It seems, sadly, that the chattering classes didn’t misunderestimate his skills in governance.

Here’s some fun. I tend to read left-wing sites (though not exclusively). One of the impressions I come away with from both sites is the idea that the right looks at people with a “you’re either with us, or against us” mindset, which means that most of those one the left are essentially terrorists or terrorist supporters.

Now I know that most people on the right don’t think like that, even while they believe very reasonably that those on the left are wrong. Yet that’s the undercurrent on the right, just as the one on the left is that the right wants to sell your babies to give tax cuts to millionaires, or some such. That’s why the following analysis, which I made up on my own but which I’m sure has occurred to others, would undoubtedly appear if we had a Democratic president…

President Bush called on Americans yesterday to conserve gasoline by driving less. He also issued a directive for all federal agencies to cut their own energy use and to encourage employees to use public transportation.

Ari Fleischer, then Mr. Bush’s press secretary, responded to a question about reducing American energy consumption by saying “that’s a big no.”

“The president believes that it’s an American way of life,” Mr. Fleischer said.

Why does the President hate America?

Go read this post on Americablog. There’s a big image on there, but give it time to download for full effect. I can’t decide if the President is lying, or if he really believes what he’s saying. I also can’t decide which would be worse.

Michael Brown is now the former director of FEMA. This is one final letdown, resigning just as our need is greatest. We need people with experience of organizing Arabian horses, and as the President himself said, Brown was doing ‘a heck of a job’. For him to resign now, and for Bush to accept the resignation of such a valuable public servant, is a disgrace.

I can understand the desire to use public funds carefully and even cautiously, ensuring that any money distributed is used for the intended purpose (notice I’m not even mentioning Iraq in this). But at what point did this ever seem like a good idea?

The House on Wednesday was expected to pass two Katrina-related bills: One would allow the secretary of education to waive the current rule that recipients of Pell Grants for low-income students must repay those grants when they are forced to withdraw from classes due to natural disasters.

Yes, I sometimes read Faux News, what of it?