Facing the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, George Bush took his first close-up tour of a devastated New Orleans yesterday in what appeared to be as much a political damage-limitation exercise as an opportunity to size up the physical damage from Hurricane Katrina.
Almost all of his public remarks were defensive denying there was any racial bias in the way the federal authorities responded to the victims in a predominantly poor, black city, and denying that the war in Iraq had in any way drained away resources from rescue efforts.
