The Presidency of the United States is the single most powerful position in the world, whether elected, appointed, or gained by oneself.

The President affects nearly every life around the globe, and has a great bearing on the health, safety, and well-being of every United States citizen.

It is paramount that the President be responsible to the citizenry who elect him, lest he become a power unto himself.

That is why it is so dangerous that Bush refuses to take responsibility for his actions and his inactions.

Examples:

During the Clinton-Bush handover, Clinton made sure Bush knew he would be spending more time on terror than any other subject.  After all, Clinton and company had stopped a Millenium bomb plot, and a plot to simultaneously hijack multiple airplanes.

A month before 9/11, President Bush got a Presidential briefing titled "bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."  It includes this sentence:

"FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

Bush's reaction to this frightening information?  He spent almost all of the rest of August on vacation.  On September 9th, when Congress proposed a boost of $600 million for antiterror programs, Bush and Rumsfeld threatened a veto because the money would take away less than 1% from the missile defense program.  On September 10th, Ashcroft sent his Justice Department budget request to Bush, which included spending increases for zero programs dealing with antiterror (and 68 that did not), and listed terrorism nowhere among Ashcroft's top seven priorities.  (Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:  A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, p. 131)

In other words, Bush and his Administration were asleep at the switch.  It would have taken a major stroke of luck to prevent 9/11 with Bush's attitude.  Such a bit of luck didn't happen, and 3,000 died.

Did Bush take his share of the blame?

Never.  It was all the terrorists' fault.  Not a bit of blame to be found in the shirking of his duties.  Not a bit of blame in his laziness.  In his lack of foresight.  In his failure to heed the warnings.

When we invaded Iraq, incurring the displeasure of the Western world and the fear and hatred of the Islamic world, all for WMD programs the "evidence" for which he cherry-picked, and which didn't in the end exist at all, causing thousands of deaths and major wounds to our soldiers, and by some estimates, 100,000 civilian Iraqi deaths, did Bush take the blame?

No.  He blamed his generals (who actually advised him to go in with more troops, when they saw they couldn't stop him from going ahead with the invasion at all).  He blamed Saddam.  He blamed anyone he could, but never shouldered his part of the responsibility.

Instead of an "I'm sorry," what do we get?  Bush hides the coffins and funerals of our troops from the public, attacks anyone horrified at his lies as unpatriotic, and claims that removing Saddam was part of the war on terror, even though Saddam had no part in 9/11 and no alliance with al-Qaeda.

Bush, in fact, admits to no mistakes since 9/11:  when asked by a reporter, he went through a litany of decisions he made that he was happy with, then said, "I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes.  I'm sure I have.  But you just put me under the spot here."  When he was asked a similar question later, during the debates--presumably after having plenty of time to now think of an answer, he said,

I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right.

That's really what you're – when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision.

Bush continued on this course for a while longer before finally concluding:

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV. (end quote)

In other words, he stands by the lies he told to get us into his Iraq war, and all other mistakes, if he made them, either will only be evident to historians, or are based on appointments he made that he won't discuss.

This is hardly the stance of a principled, ethical man.

What happened more recently, when 380 tons of high explosives were found to have been looted at Al-Qaqaa?  Well, even though the U.S. was warned about the explosives, and the explosives were definitely there when the U.S. troops invaded, they weren't contained.  The sole focus of Bush's invasion "plan" was to take the land as quickly as possible.  No plans were made to secure important sites, except for the Oil Ministry.  Thus, even though the Bush Administration had the information to keep these explosives out of the hands of insurgents and terrorists, they failed to do so.

Apology, Mr. President?

No.  Instead, he tries to claim Kerry was attacking him without knowing all the facts; that Kerry was somehow blaming the troops, even though Kerry was clearly blasting the Bush Administration's failure in leadership; that the explosives may or may not have been there at the start of the war.  Trouble is, the "may or may not be there" argument was based on a misleading reading of one of the news stories--so neither was Kerry jumping to conclusions nor was there any chance that the explosives were anywhere but in al-Qaqaa when Saddam was ousted.

And who was blaming the troops?  Bush's Republican pal, Rudoph Giuliani:

"No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there," Giuliani said on NBC's "Today" show. "Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"  (end quote)

Disgusting.  Like the troops, who were told to take Baghdad at all speed, were going to go against their orders and search and protect all buildings on the way.  No, this is a failure of planning from those who should be doing the planning--Bush and his Administration.

So, when you think "who blames the troops," it isn't Kerry.  It's Republicans.

And when you think "lack of accountability," think Bush.  Because he won't take the blame for any thing, any time, any place, any way.

That's fine if you're a dictator.  Not so great if you're a leader of a free republic.

So now we have...

#4:  Bush refuses to take responsibility for his actions.