A while ago I wrote a post saying that President Bush could take a lesson in leadership from Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.  Basically I was impressed by the guts that Cuban exhibited when he took responsibility for some of the bad personnel moves made by the team over the last few years.  To paraphrase he said, "I was wrong and I’m going to learn from my mistakes."

According to an article on the Washington Post website, today at a press conference the president made the following comments:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all
levels of government," Bush said at a joint White House news conference
with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. "To the extent the federal
government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

Bush’s comments came in response to a reporter’s question as
to whether the United States was capable of handling another terrorist
attack in light of its sluggish and inadequate response to a natural
disaster like Katrina, which unlike a terrorist attack came with some
warning.

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe
attack? That’s a very important question and it’s in the national
interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush
said. He repeated his earlier assertions that he wanted to know both
what went right and went wrong with the federal response to the
disaster.

That’s a big step for the president in that it’s the first time I can recall him publicly admitting that he or his administration has made a mistake.  Now hopefully he can follow it up with even more leadership, like:

• Getting rid of some of the sycophants he’s surrounded himself with, or at least balance them out with people who will give him the bad news as well as the good.
• Making the hard decisions needed to fix the problems that the government’s response to Katrina exposed.
• Finding any more Michael Brown’s who might have gotten their leadership positions due to Republican influence or fundraising abilities and quietly getting rid of them. He should do what some traditional Japanese businesses do to executives they feel are failures; give them a beautiful office with a nice view and absolutely nothing to do.  Their egos won’t let them stay around long.
• Calling Rep. Virginia Foxx (see this post) and getting some advice about doing the right thing, both conscientiously and politically.

I’m not holding my breath, but today’s press conference does show that anything’s possible.