Visiting New Orleans for the 15th time since the hurricane of 2005, President Bush declared last week that "When Katrina broke through the levees, it broke a lot of hearts. But it didn't affect the spirit of a lot of citizens of this community." The city of New Orleans, the president assured his listeners, "is coming back."

That is doubtful. New Orleans was deeply troubled before Katrina, beset by corruption, high crime rates, poor family structure and a weak economy. Nearly one-third of New Orleans residents had incomes below the poverty level. The schools were abysmal. Some estimates put the dropout rate at 50 percent. Was it any surprise that the state and local officials who presided over what in another context we might label a "failed state" responded so poorly to Hurricane Katrina?

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became only the second Republican president after the Civil War to win and to serve two full White House terms, liked to quote approvingly the first Republican president and the American martyr to that war, Abraham Lincoln: "The role of government is to do for people what they cannot do at all for themselves or so well do in their individual capacities."

George W. Bush, just the second Republican president since Ike to win and to serve two full terms, has a much different slant on the subject. As the first American president to take the nation to war without a draft and with tax cuts, George W. Bush repeatedly assured his fellow citizens with these flattering words: "You know how to spend your money far better than the federal government does."

True to his word, President Bush's tax cuts and spending policies have added more to the nation's total debt in the last six-and-a-half years than did the administrations of all U.S. presidents — combined — from George Washington through George H. W. Bush.

An elected executive — whether a mayor dealing with a city council, a governor facing a state legislature or the U.S. president wrestling with Congress

— in order to win a legislative majority, depends on two perishable political resources: love and, more importantly, fear.

Legislators will sometimes cast a vote because of their feelings of affection, gratitude or loyalty toward the mayor, governor or president. But fear — of the executive's wrath or retaliation — is an even more effective vote-getter.

After the centerpiece of the administration's domestic agenda was killed — by Republican votes — in the U.S. Senate this week, this harsh political post-mortem was delivered: With a little over 17 months remaining in his White House term, President George W. Bush on Capitol Hill is neither feared nor loved.