Each and Every Congressional Democrat in this country needs to be calling for George W. Bush's resignation. And we need to make this all about Katrina and Bush's incompetence. Bush and Cheney specifically made it clear in 2004 that people should vote for them because they could protect them from terrorist attacks. Remember when Dick Cheney said that he worried that if Kerry was President, there would be attacks? Well, they're in charge, there was an attack (albeit not a terrorist one) and they failed. They failed to do the one basic thing you promised they would do, which was to protect American lives.
Add to that the fact that they appoint the most inept cronies to top positions of HOMELAND SECURITY, people who obviously had no clue what they were doing now and wouldn't have had a clue what to do if terrorists had unexpectedly attacked instead. By showing our government's weakness, they have sent a blanket invitation to Al Qaeda to come over and have at us because once they attack, we'll be too crippled by bureaucracy and ineptitude to do anything about it. They also showed that 4 years and hundreds of billions of dollars of homeland security spending has also been basically flushed down the toilet or worse, just handed to contractors who happen to be big GOP donors.
When Republicans argue that the state officials didn't do their jobs, we should agree with them, because Kathleen Blanco and her appointees could have and should have done a lot more. But even if she had had every national guard unit at the ready and sent them in on Monday, they would still need a lot more reinforcements (to the tune of 40,000 more troops) to bring peace to the situation and all that Blanco could have done was to bring about a few pockets of stability, not the full scale rescue mission needed to save thousands of American lives. Also, we need to turn that criticism around and say that on Monday and Tuesday, as soon as it became clear that the state officials were not up to the task, because of both incompetence and insufficient numbers, that's ALL THE MORE REASON that this "executive President" who can "get results" should have over come his lackeys and the bureaucracy and sent in active duty troops IMMEDIATELY into New Orleans to bring supplies, enforce law and order, and get people out of there instead of going to silly events on the West Coast and staying on vacation. So what if it means calling on the Insurrection Act and insulting a Governor's authority? A real President who campaigned on protecting American lives wouldn't let these petty political issues get in the way of saving American lives.
Also, Congressional Democrats should make this about the abject negligence and cronyism in the wake of Katrina, pure and simple. Don't tie Iraq or the GWOT or Global Warming or marshlands into this. That only gives the Republicans an opportunity to say that we're exploiting the crisis for our own political ideas. Plus, they're issues that there is a lot of nationwide disagreement over, as opposed to incompetence that has led to loss of American life, over which there is pretty widespread condemnation and anger and dumbfoundedness. Also, I don't think that we should say that if elected, we'll immediately work towards impeachment, because I think that would run afoul of a lot of Americans' appreciation for checks and balances.
Look, I am under no illusions that a uniform call for resignation would mean that he actually does it. Despite the fact that if America was a Parliamentary system and Bush was Prime Minister, we'd be having a vote of no confidence immediately, I realize there's no way he would resign. That's not the main point. The point is, by having a uniform call for Presidential Resignation (not just Brown and Chertoff, but the guy where the buck's supposed to stop), we're forcing every single Republican congressman into a position of defending murderous, inexcusable incompetence that has proved 4 years of Homeland Security spending to be a waste of money. And when they do defend a President who has utterly failed his mission of protecting Americans, which is the MOST BASIC FUNCTION of government, the Democrats will have a gold mine of quotes that can be replayed over and over again in negative ads during the 2006 elections showing that the Congressional Republicans are just a rubber stamp for cronyism and incompetence. That's how we show that these Congressional Republicans are political hacks with no moral backbones and that is how we win back both houses of Congress
And no, this isn't taking advantage of people's misery and a national tragedy. This is taking advantage of a President's gross and utter negligence, incompetence, and lack of caring and understanding that has led to thousands of Americans dying unnecessarily. That's what an opposition that ever wants to come to power does.