WASHINGTON - President Bush flew to the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast for a daylong tour of devastation yesterday and agreed that the results of his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina have been "not acceptable,"amid a surge of denunciations from political leaders in both parties.

As a sometimes teary-eyed president hugged victims and inspected damage he described as "worse than imaginable," he promised to see the region through "the darkest days." But frustration that has been building in the days since the hurricane submerged New Orleans and wiped out sections of Mississippi and Alabama erupted with intense ferocity from refugee centers to the halls of Congress.

The criticism of the federal government's response came from across the political spectrum, including former president Bill Clinton, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican from Georgia, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, the Congressional Black Caucus and a sputtering, angry mayor of New Orleans. A Senate committee plans to open hearings next week into what critics called a sluggish response that has left many thousands of people hungry, homeless and hopeless.

While both parties rallied behind Bush's request for $10.5 billion for initial emergency aid and Congress last night sent him the legislation for signature, lawmakers and other politicians lambasted the administration. Democrats accused Bush of a failure of leadership at a desperate moment. Republicans focused their fire on Bush's government, rather than the president, but were at times scathing.

Bush, who almost never publicly acknowledges mistakes, paid deference to the rage yesterday with a rare concession that his administration's efforts fell short in the opening days of the crisis. "The results are not acceptable," he told reporters on the South Lawn before leaving the White House for his tour of afflicted areas. He added: "We'll get on top of this situation, and we're going to help people that need help."

At his first stop in Mobile, Ala., he repeated the promise. "If it's not going exactly right, we're going to make it go exactly right," Bush vowed. "If there's problems, we're going to address the problems. And that's what I've come down to assure people of."

By the time he reached Biloxi, Miss., though, he tried to refashion his "not acceptable" judgment. He said his earlier comments were "not denigrating the efforts of anybody," and added, "I am satisfied with the response. I'm not satisfied with all the results."

Bush appeared stunned by what he saw on the ground. He choked up and had difficulty talking at first after listening to a briefing by Republican Govs. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Bob Riley of Alabama. His motorcade had to dodge fallen trees when later driving around Biloxi. When Bush got out of the limousine, he came across two distraught sisters who had nothing but the clothes on their backs. He gathered them both into his arms, kissed one on the head and walked with them for a while. "Hang in there," he told them.

But the problems with the response were evident during the same encounter. When the women said they needed clothes, Bush directed them to a nearby Salvation Army center. A local official accompanying him corrected the president. "It's wiped out."

"It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine," Bush said at another point. As he left New Orleans, Bush said: "I'm going to fly out of here in a minute, but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen. I understand the devastation requires more than one day's attention."

What started out as a humanitarian crisis, though, has rapidly spawned a political crisis for the president. Unlike the aftermath of the terrorist attacks four years ago, when both parties rallied behind the president for a rare moment of national unity, Bush has come under withering fire for not taking the hurricane seriously enough at first and for not mobilizing a quicker, more extensive response.

"They don't have a clue what's going on down here," an exasperated New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told a local talk radio station during an interview in which he shouted and wept. "Get off your asses and let's do something."

The Congressional Black Caucus convened a news conference to complain about inadequate efforts to help dislocated residents, many of whom are African American.

"I'm ashamed of America," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, a Democrat from Michigan. "I'm outraged by the lack of response by our federal government."

A succession of Democrats then marched to the House floor to vent. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Florida, called the federal response "nothing short of a national disgrace" and compared the president's slow return from his Texas vacation to when he "dropped everything" to fly back to Washington to sign legislation intervening in the case of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo.

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