The Eye of the Indifferent Storm

Among the diastrous post-Katrina disaster poll numbers, there are some nuggets that deserve scrutiny. Of course, the President is polling at 38%, his personal worst, and in fact, the worst for nearly every acting president since Nixon. The President has lower approval ratings that Nixon during the Watergate scandal, as Jigga has pointed out.

But there are some other, vitally important, telling numbers. We start with the bad news for The GOP:

More critical to President Bush—and the GOP’s future as the nation’s majority party: most Americans, 52 percent, say they do not trust the president “to make the right decisions during a domestic crisis” (45 percent do). The numbers are exactly the same when the subject is trust of the president to make the right decisions during an international crisis.

Why the gloom? Forty percent of Americans say the federal government’s response to the crisis in New Orleans was poor. Thirty-two percent say it was fair; 21 percent say it was good and five percent believe it was excellent.

The general trend has been a steady decline of approval since the election. Iraq has continued to be an utter nightmare, Bush's staunch love for Karl Rove and his cronyism has hurt him recently, and the horrifyingly inept disaster response has pulled those numbers down steadily.

And yet, Bush still has 38% approval ratings. Seeing as how his King Midas touch has operated to devastating effect, he should be well under the 20%: That is, the top economic bracket and the percentages that fringe it who have benefitted greatly [economically and legally] from The Administration. The other 80% of Americans just keep getting screwed.

The president’s Republican base, in particular, remains extremely loyal. For instance, 53 percent of Democrats say the federal government did a poor job in getting help to people in New Orleans after Katrina. But just 19 percent of Republicans feel that way. In fact, almost half of Republicans (48 percent) either believes the federal government did a good job (37 percent) or an excellent job (11 percent) helping those stuck in New Orleans.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats are more forgiving of local and state governments (the New Orleans mayor and Louisiana governor are Democrats), though Democrats are not as forgiving as Republicans are of the Feds. More than a quarter (28 percent) of Democrats either believe the state and local governments did a good job (24 percent) or an excellent job (4 percent.) While 30 percent of Democrats believe the local and state governments did a poor job, 43 percent of Republicans believe the state and local officials did a poor job.

Yes. The Republicans polled actually think that things turned out okay down there. This is a key problem. They not only do not condemn the response, they believe the response to have been appropriate, reasonable, and effective.

I would like to point out that this would seem to indicate a mass Republican delusion. I really would. But it's not possible. There is no delusion. What America needs to grasp is that they sincerely percieve the response to have been adequate.

Every American with Compassion needs to recognize this. The so-called Compassionate Conservatives feel that the victims got what they needed; literally. They're okay with everything. Nothing wrong here. Nothing can be fixed; it's all good.

That attitude is the new American obscenity. We cannot allow these top-bracket ideologues to force us to accept their complicit inadequacies.