Up on WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama’s section on Hurricane Katrina refers to President Bush’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in dealing with the crisis.

Now that the reviews are coming in for Team Obama and the Kentucky ice storm, how should we classify the Obama response? Certainly it’s not “unconscionable ineptitude.” Maybe it’s just plain old ineptitude:

President Barack Obama’s first federal disaster response to ice storms across the heartland netted mixed results for an administration that has pledged after Hurricane Katrina to “never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.”
More than 40 people were killed, and millions were left without power across Appalachia and the Ozarks in the wake of severe winter weather that began last week. Kentucky was the hardest hit, with 12 people killed by the storm.
A federal emergency was declared in the state Wednesday night as Obama began working the phones and pushing for a rapid response, but help to victims in some areas was slow to come. Vast areas of the state remained without electricity Monday.
“It took quite a bit of time” to get additional aid, said Randall Smith, the emergency management director for Grayson County, Ky. “The response in the first four days was very unsatisfactory.”
All of Grayson County was without power through the weekend, and by Monday afternoon, only 30 percent of residents had regained electricity. The biggest problem for local officials was getting enough water for people in shelters and caring for local residents with special needs.
“I know there is always disorganization, but it has taken some time for these efforts to get moving,” Smith said.
All of Kentucky’s National Guard troops were mobilized for the first time in the state’s history, but even with the extra manpower, help to some areas seemed slow. Many units in Grayson and other counties lacked enough vehicles and supplies, officials said.
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshea has been in frequent communication with Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano since Wednesday night, talking to Napolitano four times on Sunday alone. Beshear praised the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response, but his spokesman, Jay Blanton, acknowledged that people in the state were frustrated.
“People always want things yesterday, but this was a massive emergency,” he said. “The challenge for everybody is that the storm knocked a blow to our communications infrastructure. It was very difficult in the early stages to get a clear sense of the scope of the problem.”
“It’s understandable for folks to be frustrated,” he added. “The scope of this is larger than anything the state of Kentucky has ever dealt with.”