Today's McLaughlin Group

John McLaughlin is an obnoxious, arrogant blowhard. However, he does sometimes take on difficult issues directly on his PBS show The McLaughlin Group. Here are some key points from this week's episode.

The President has lost the aura of 9/11, the strong leader on that pile of rubble. The bumbling and the torpor of his initial response, I think, is part of his permanent legacy. — Pat Buchanan

Eleanor Clift also connects two very important dots: Karl Rove was out of action (in the hospital with kidney stones) at the height of Hurricane Katrina. Rove's absence goes a long way to explaining Bush's deer-in-the-headlights response to Katrina: Dubya didn't have the reassuring voice coming through the lump in the back of his suit.

This is the longest learning curve in history. The President says we have to learn from our mistakes. That's what we said after 9/11, and this is really costing us. We look like a village with only idiots. ... This was an attack that gave us three days of warning.— Jonathan Turley, NBC legal analyst

When even Pat Buchanan uses words like "bumbling" and "torpor," it's time for new leadership in Washington.