Confidence

The rate of US citizens who are confident in the ability of the government to respond to an event of terror in America has plummeted in the past weeks from nearly 80% to just over 50%.

Likely, following the second disaster of Katrina [the first being the hurricane, the second, America's response to it], American's realized that The Administration would be happily capable of sending warplanes out over seas to random targets and beating the drum while waving the flag; but that that would be less than half of an actual response to terror. The majority of their work would, indeed, have to go toward preparation, rapid response, health care, protection, and assistance. And they have proven how dramatically they'd fail in all of those tests.