Hurricane Katrina advanced an apparent American political truism. It is that a president might be able to hide for a term, but will be revealed inevitably if he gets to a second.

Nixon's darkness met its fate in the second term. Reagan's simplistic superficiality was laid bare in his second go-round. Iran-contra happened and he was able to contend credibly that he lacked a clue what was going on in the White House basement. Clinton's radiator actually overheated in the first term, but we didn't find out until the second.

Now we see plainly in his fifth presidential year that George W. Bush is incompetent and insensitive.

This fortunate son of privilege didn't get it, never got it, probably doesn't even really get it now -- that a Third World America washed up in New Orleans, and that poor people, mostly black, felt abandoned in their own bountiful land, because, in fact, they were, as they so often are.

This was my favorite line of last week, from an editorial in my favorite rabidly right-wing newspaper: "President Bush, himself, seemed to need some time to strike the right tone. He is not at his best at such moments."

It turns out that rabid right-wing editorialists can understate.

First, this boy president directed the Air Force One pilot to veer from the normal Crawford-to-Washington vacation orbit. George W. flew low over New Orleans. He peeked out from the secure detachment of a little airplane window. Apparently absent a speech writer, he mouthed for benefit of the pool reporter that, boy, it looked devastating and probably was doubly so down there.

Twice as uncomfortable as Air Force One?

Back at the White House and confronted with tragic pictures of dehumanization, reports of gang violence and a breathtakingly unconscionable lack of urgency in his federal government's response, Bush walked to the Rose Garden and spouted mere platitudes.

He did not assure the stranded that he would be coming for them by nightfall. He did not declare that American streets would never be surrendered to thugs. He was no Rudy Giuliani. He wasn't even a Bill Clinton.

Here's what he said: "We're with you. New Orleans will be back. God bless you."

Then he and his people decided he actually needed to set foot in New Orleans. Helicoptered to dry ground, he walked to a microphone and vowed the resurrection of a great American city where he'd had a lot of good times, "sometimes too good."

As old women were stranded in nursing homes, as young mothers walked in sewage holding babies not getting formula, as corpses floated not so far away, our president's frame of reference was getting drunk on Bourbon Street.

How could it be otherwise? After all, this is King George II, beloved firstborn of the queen mum, Barbara.

On Tuesday, Barbara Bush toured the refugee center in the Houston Astrodome and told a radio interviewer afterward, "And so many of the people in the arena, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Let them eat -- oh, anything.

If you're ever vacationing in New England, don't forget to drive up the southern coast of Maine to Kennebunkport. Go through the village and out to the road along the side of the rocky bay, across which you can behold that massive compound extending to what is called Walker's Point. Get out and take a picture. That's America's Buckingham Palace.

John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com