Mr. Big Government

Here's the one unscripted image of the night: a Reuters photo showing a clearly exhausted, sweat-soaked Bush returning to Air Force One after his speech last night.

The Coverage

Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker write in The Washington Post: "President Bush, summoning the American spirit and 'a faith in God no storm can take away,' vowed from the heart of the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone Thursday night to rebuild this devastated city and the rest of the Gulf Coast with 'one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.' . . .

"The language reflected not only Bush's own faith but also his decision to bring back Michael J. Gerson, his first-term speechwriter and now a policy adviser, to help draft perhaps his most important address since launching the Iraq war in 2003."

Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times: "White House officials viewed the speech as the culmination of a pivotal week in which Mr. Bush tried to turn around his image as a chief executive slow to respond to the greatest natural disaster in American history. The speech was meant to portray Mr. Bush as a forceful leader in control of the crisis and sympathetic to the people in the region."

Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post: "Hurricane Katrina struck at the core of Bush's presidency by undermining the central assertion of his reelection campaign, that he was a strong and decisive leader who could keep the country safe in a crisis. Never again will the White House be able to point to his often-praised performance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, without skeptics recalling the fumbling and slow-off-the-mark response of his administration after the hurricane and the flooding in New Orleans. . . .

"[A]s if recognizing that his own road back will be one marked by steady but small steps, he spoke with workmanlike focus, spelling out the details of what has been done and will be done to help those displaced by the storm. . . .

"In again taking responsibility for the federal government's failures, Bush signaled last night that the White House has decided not to contest the widespread perceptions that his administration failed in the early days of the crisis. By embracing those criticisms, they hope to make the issue a sideshow that will play out sometime in the future. Instead, after a halting start, the White House appears intently focused on demonstrating the president's capacity to manage the huge rebuilding effort ahead."

Richard W. Stevenson writes in the New York Times: "The violence of Hurricane Katrina and his faltering response to it have left to Mr. Bush the task not just of physically rebuilding a swath of the United States, but also of addressing issues like poverty and racial inequality that were exposed in such raw form by the storm.

"The challenge would be immense for any president, but is especially so for Mr. Bush. He is scrambling to assure a shaken, angry nation not only that is he up to the task but also that he understands how much it disturbed Americans to see their fellow citizens suffering and their government responding so ineffectually. . . .

"Mr. Bush called for unity in tackling the problems. But with only a camera before him, and New Orleans silent around him, he could draw no strength or self-assurance from the cheers of a united nation, as he did when he addressed a joint session of Congress nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Not only did his own stagecraft leave him alone in the spotlight, but whatever good will flowed to him across the aisle in those moments after the terrorist attacks is long gone, a victim of a polarized political culture that he did not create but to which he has often contributed."

Edwin Chen and Mary Curtius write in the Los Angeles Times: "Bush did not estimate a cost for reconstruction, but budget analysts predicted it would reach $200 billion -- roughly the same amount spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and about double the inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II."

Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post: "Bush made no mention of the fiscal challenge or of spending cuts or tax increases to help pay for his proposals."

Bathroom Watch

The blogosphere is still entranced with the Reuters photo I wrote about yesterday showing Bush scribbling a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a session at the United Nations, asking if he could go to the bathroom.

Daryl Lang writes in Photo District News that it was a Reuters picture editor, not the photographer, who zoomed in on the note.

Day of Prayer

Bush is speaking today at an invitation-only service at the National Cathedral, where the program has been carefully constructed by the White House.

Rachel Zoll writes for the Associated Press: "Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush has asked religious leaders around the country to join him in a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance on Friday for the storm's victims.

"But once again, several pastors said, the government was a step behind.

"While many houses of worship planned to participate, several others around the country said they had already held such services and would not join the president. Some said they were so angry over the government's sluggish response to blacks and poor people in New Orleans, who waited days for rescue, that they would not heed Bush's request."

Tale of Two Presidents?

As I wrote in Monday's column: "Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are longtime observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers."

Among them was Newsweek's Evan Thomas .

Now Aaron Kinney writes in Salon, comparing Thomas's piece with some of Newsweek's earlier coverage.

"Witness its cover story by Richard Wolffe from Jan. 24, 2005 . . . the subhead of which read: 'He's hands-on, detail-oriented and hates 'yes' men. The George Bush you don't know has big dreams -- and is racing the clock to realize them.'

"Wolffe described the president as a man whose 'leadership style belies his caricature as a disengaged president who is blindly loyal, dislikes dissent and covets his own downtime' -- a caricature that looks like a dead ringer after the vacationing president's reaction to Katrina."

Kinney offers a few examples of the contradictions.

"Wolffe: 'To hear his friends tell it, Bush hates toadies.'

"Thomas: 'Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty' and 'aides sometimes cringe before [his] displeasure.'

"Wolffe: Bush's 'style in policy briefings is to narrow the debate with a series of questions, crystallizing the competing opinions and exploring the disagreements between his staff.'

"Thomas: 'After five years in office, [Bush] is surrounded largely by people who agree with him.' "

Valerie Plame Watch

Reuters reports: "The Justice Department and the special counsel investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity pressed Congress to block legislation that would compel the administration to turn over documents related to the case, the department said in a letter released on Thursday.

"The Justice Department, in a letter dated September 14, said special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had advised that producing documents and holding hearings would interfere with his investigation. The letter was sent to the House Intelligence Committee's Republican chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan."

Karl Rove Watch

Karl Rove managed to tear himself away from his reconstruction duties yesterday for a fundraising visit to Greensboro, N.C.

The Greensboro News and Record reports that he attended a Republican National Committee fundraiser at a private home.

"Guilford County Republican Party Chairman Marcus Kindley said Rove answered questions from guests around the state.

"The Bush administration has been criticized for being slow to respond to the damage spawned by Hurricane Katrina.

"Kindley said Rove reassured the crowd that the full story of the disaster would be told.

" 'He told us to hang in there,' Kindley said."

Meanwhile, Lloyd Grove writes in his New York Daily News gossip column with more on Rove's kidney stones.

"Washington insiders have been buzzing that President Bush's guru-in-chief -- often called 'Bush's Brain' -- has been suffering from the painful urinary-tract malady for the past couple of weeks, causing him to miss some key Katrina strategy sessions.

"I'm told that the 54-year-old deputy White House chief of staff -- who apparently was feeling well enough yesterday to travel outside the nation's capital -- visited the hospital, possibly twice, to relieve his agony since Labor Day.

"White House officials declined to speak on the record about Rove's kidney stones, due to the extreme delicacy of discussions about internal organs of top presidential advisers."