The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

postchat@aol.com

Commentary:
The idea that anyone in the media (and therefore the country) would follow a leader who lied (or was wrong) about war prior to the last election boggles my mind and shows how absolutely corrupt the media has become.

The UN inspectors were on the ground in Iraq and under UN resolution 1441 the US and all other member nations were asked to turn over their intelligence.

The US was very reluctant to do this, why? Where was the media. After the inspectors saw our intelligence (and months before war started) they said Bush's intelligence was "outdated" and "garbage." Why did the media "beat the drums of war" instead of destroy Bush?

For a single reporter to ignore the fact that we knew Bush's intelligence didn't exist--the UN inspectors couldn't verify a single word of it, requires us to take a serious look at the media that helped him take us to war for no reason. As bad as Bush is, he had to have a lot of really bad people in the media pushing his lies and allowing his to commit one crime after another, year after year.

Many in the media must be fired or as this commentator says, they must recognize their time is gone. The idiocy that was the Bush White House from day one began with lies about tax cuts. The media (and the democrats) let him get away with passing those cuts and then passing more after 911 and after the GOP returned us to record deficits. Where was the media.

911 happened because Bush was asleep at the wheel–where was the media. WMD happened because Bush was asleep at the wheel–where was the media. We have year after year of record deficits because Bush was asleep at the wheel–where was the media. We had disaster aid held back because Bush was on vacation–where was the media?

Thousands of innocent people died in Iraq because the media let Bush be an idiot. Thousands of Americans died on 911 and after Katrina because the media let Bush get away with being an idiot So when the media attacks Bush now over Katrina, ask yourself where they were when they could have been stopped and it would have mattered. The media has as much blood on their hands as Bush. We need new reporters and nearly all the old reporters must go.

After Katrina hit, glowing stories about Bush taking control were published. All of them were lies. The stories were probably written by the White House and passed though liberal and conservative commentators who sucked up this White House. Because of their lies, the WH was able to get away with doing nothing and thousands died. The must be shamed out of their jobs.