Senator John McCain took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared the handling of the disaster “terrible and disgraceful” and pledged that it would never happen again.
Senator John McCain on Thursday toured the neighborhood in New Orleans that was hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. McCain ticked off a long list of mistakes by the current administration, saying there were “unqualified people in charge, there was a total misreading of the dimensions of the disaster, there was a failure of communications.”
The pointed critique was one of his harshest assessments yet of the Bush presidency and came as he has been moving to corral restive elements of the Republican Party — and the Bush donor network — behind his candidacy.
Asked at a news conference outside St. David’s Catholic Church if he traced the failure of leadership straight to the top, Mr. McCain, who has said he wants to campaign with President Bush, said emphatically, “Yes.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/us/politics/25mccain.html?hp