I had Bush on the car radio during the speech. My main reaction: It’s perfect comeuppance for a tax slashing Republican like George Bush to be forced to embrace FDR alphabet soup politics. He even felt compelled to reference FDR’s heroics during the Great Depression—while outlining his own federal government rescue mission. (Norquist must have been fuming.) It was a perfect ending to the Gingrich thru Bush era. They came face to face with the failure of their policies. And there’s Bush singing the praises of big government. HYPOCRITE!!!

However, immediately after the speech this beautiful thing happened that will stand forever for me as a memory of this whole Katrina era. In honor of Kanye West’s zeitgeist moment on TV (“George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People”), I bought West’s new CD yesterday. (I want it to be #1). I hadn’t listened to it yet, and so, immediately after Bush was done, I put on the CD and drove around listening to that. And it turns out, there’s even a line about Bush in one of the songs: “Who gave Saddam anthrax? George Bush got the answers.”