In which I am pleasantly shocked

About a week ago, I ended a rant about presidential accountability with this:

"I expect an apology to the people of New Orleans when this calms down, and I expect explanations of what was done wrong and what will be done correctly in the future. Sadly, I doubt we will get either one."

Well well well. It appears I was wrong on that. Today, we got this:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

I'll be damned. Given that the only thing this can do for the president's PR is make everyone like him more, it shouldn't be surprising that it happened. But don't let the cynic in me fool you - I'm happy about this. It was the right thing to do, and the president did it, and that increases my respect for him.