Everybody says President George W. Bush is an idiot, but we at Various Things & Stuff don’t think so. After all, he had the good sense not to unfurl a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” during his latest landing on a Navy ship, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, where Hurricane Katrina relief efforts are being coordinated.

Noticeably absent, of course, was still-in-place Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, who’d been “recalled” to Washington, D.C. but not fired from his job, a job that he surely bungled with deadly results. Just one week before Brown was relieved of his duties, Bush was telling him “you’re doing a heck of a job.”

What changed in a week? The body count? Politics?

Bush clearly lacks former President Bill Clinton’s finely honed political instincts. In a Clinton administration, Brown would long ago have submitted his resignation, and Clinton would have accepted it. Total failure is not an option when dealing with American lives, and Clinton knew it.

Then again, Clinton would have cut short whatever vacation he was on to rush to the disaster zone, even if the only thing he could really do would have been to be photographed comforting the dispossessed. He knew the value of presidential empathy, something that seems to have totally eluded Bush.

On a more personal note, we got a call this weekend from a semi-regular correspondent objecting to something we said while guest hosting “Nevada Week in Review” on Friday night. FEMA Director Michael Brown was relieved of his duties, we said, and the rest of us were just relived.

How unprofessional, the caller said. He turned the show off after that crack.

Wait, let us get this straight: Brown screws up royally, and people die. We make mention of it on TV, and nobody dies (except perhaps from boredom; we’re still waiting for final figures). And we’re the ones who are unprofessional?

Please, caller. Your capacity to miss the point is staggering.

We don’t mind that our correspondent clicked off. In fact, we’re glad. Anybody who has his priorities that screwed up ought not to be watching news review shows anyway. He ought to be laboring in the administration.

As for us, well, we stand behind our remarks, as always.