It's the Governance, Stupid!

Katrina may well put an end to the culture wars in Washington and move the political debate back to the issue of governance.

Katrina was a gut-punch to America's political psyche, and the lay of the land is going to change in her wake. In the aftermath, as one might expect, the pundits have tried to shape how that landscape will look according to personal ideology.

But they will inevitably overlook the most frighteningly obvious lesson from all of this.

What Katrina revealed about our federal government was an utter lack of competence, and the sorry state of its institutions after 30 years of spending on the wrong priorities.