From Scout:

From WaPo…

NEW ORLEANS, April 21 — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, touring a neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina, ripped into the Bush administration Friday for failing to move faster to clean up the city, and he predicted that voters will punish President Bush and the Republican Party for what he called the federal government’s inadequate response to the storm.

“I think it’s a searing, burning issue, and I think it’s going to cost George Bush his legacy, and it’s going to cost the Republicans the House and Senate [in November] and maybe very well the presidency in the next election,” Dean said on his first visit to New Orleans since the hurricane hit. “People will never forget this.”

SNIP

The former Vermont governor said a more effective federal government by now would have removed the large piles of trash, wrecked cars, uprooted trees and other debris that lines streets in the neighborhoods hit worst. “Nine months after the hurricane, to have this — this is ridiculous,” he told reporters.

Dean helped in gutting a house in the 9th Ward.

Surveying the scene along the narrow, weed-infested street where waters appeared to have risen to 10 feet or more, Dean said Democrats would have done better. “If Bill Clinton was in the White House, this neighborhood wouldn’t look like this,” he said. “These houses wouldn’t be rebuilt, because that’s going to take some time and some money and so forth and so on. But this neighborhood would be cleaned up, and these houses would be cleaned up.”

Thank You Mr. Dean