Rovians put politics before governance. That’s why they’re such miserable failures at running the country. That’s also why, despite those failures, President Bush continues to be popular with people who only scan the front page on their way to the local news to check out the fender benders and birthdays.

Photo ops are substituted for leadership and the disinterested see the president dressed in the costume du jour, pretending to be interested in what’s going on. They miss the glazed eyes and the smirk of a poor little rich kid who would much rather be elsewhere.

Anytime the obvious is pointed out to a Rovian – like there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – the anti-Clintons immediately shriek that President Clinton thought there were WMDs, too. This from a crowd who wouldn’t step back from a crumbling cliff because stepping back from crumbling cliffs was a Clinton policy.

To Rovians, responsibility and accountability are for the little people like teachers, EMTs, cab drivers and mechanics, not for the Bushes. For the Bushes, the buck stops way over there somewhere.

So it wasn’t the president, it was the governor or mayor or “Heck of a job, Brownie,” [former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown] who dropped the ball while New Orleans drowned. All they had to do was ask and the hardworking president would have stopped clearing brush, stopped trying to sell his pie-in-the-sky Social Security fixes and rushed to the levee, sleeves rolled up and ready for the cameras.

Tony Nazar, Wilton