Who's in Charge? Karl Rove!

"Mr. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he told the officials in Washington that the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and her staff were proving incapable of organizing a coherent state effort and that his field officers in the city were reporting an 'out of control' situation. . . .

"Mr. Brown's account, in which he described making 'a blur of calls' all week to Mr. Chertoff, Mr. Card and Mr. Hagin, suggested that Mr. Bush, or at least his top aides, were informed early and repeatedly by the top federal official at the scene that state and local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly.

"A senior administration official said Wednesday night that White House officials recalled the conversations with Mr. Brown but did not believe they had the urgency or desperation he described in the interview."

At the UN

Peter Baker and Colum Lynch write in The Washington Post: "President Bush, reaching out to an audience he has antagonized in the past, told the assembled leaders of the world Wednesday that the United States shared 'a moral duty' to combat not only terrorism but also the poverty, oppression and hopelessness that give rise to it."

Baker and Lynch also note: "When Bush was greeted by Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday, U.N. closed-circuit television showed the president joking about the tension over [U.S. Ambassador John R.] Bolton, who once suggested it would make no difference if 10 floors of the U.N. building disappeared. 'How is he behaving?' Bush asked. 'Has the place blown up?' "

David E. Sanger and Warren Hoge write in the New York Times: "Rather than declare, as he had in the past, that countries had to choose to be 'with us or against us' in battling terrorists, Mr. Bush cast himself as the leader of one of many nations fighting the same plague."

Glenn Kessler writes in The Washington Post: "In effect, Bush used the speech to marry the United Nations' goals of defeating poverty and disease with his vision of fighting terrorism by promoting democracy. . . .

"Bush used his speech to explain why, in his view, democracy thwarts the growth of terrorism. 'Democratic nations uphold the rule of law, impose limits on the power of the state, treat women and minorities as full citizens,' he said. 'Democratic nations protect private property, free speech and religious expression.' "

But there may be a problem with that theory, Kessler notes.

"Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, F. Gregory Gause III said that a review of academic literature and statistics finds little evidence that democracy stops terrorism."

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write about Bush's visit to the UN for Newsweek.com: "Bush dislikes the place so much he often tells reporters how he'd love to reach into the normally silent rows of world leaders and shake them up with his bare hands."

Here is the text of Bush's address to the UN.