Katrina & Cindy bring bush Down!

Bush standing pummeled by Katrina, Rita

US President George W. Bush this month toured areas hit by Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita in a vain quest for a "bullhorn moment" that would
recall his leadership after the September 11 strikes.

Instead, he settled for signing a photograph of that emotional moment,
when he stood near the smoldering ashes of the World Trade Center three
days after the attacks and used a bullhorn to promise that the
terrorists would pay.

"I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who
knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," Bush told
rescue workers three days after the attacks that briefly sent his
popularity soaring.

The president has made six trips to areas ravaged by Katrina and Rita,
but so far a similar moment has eluded him, even as his polls numbers
have slumped to their lowest levels since he took office in January
2001.

"Bush was in trouble even before Katrina. He was losing support on
Iraq, people were worried about the economy -- even if the objective
data don't necessarily support that -- and Katrina exacerbated all of
that," said Eric Davis, a political science professor at Middlebury
College in Vermont.

Stung by the widespread criticisms of Washington's response to Katrina,
the White House has aggressively swung into damage control mode, but
"if they just focus on learning the lessons of Katrina, they're not
going to get the lessons on Iraq or the economy," Davis told AFP.

Bush cannot run for the White House again, but his political problems
make him less able to push what had been an ambitious second-term
agenda and may complicate his efforts to shape the future US political
landscape, said Davis.

Some Republicans are warning privately that he may not be much of an
asset in the campaign before the November 2006 legislative elections,
and at least one of the party's presidential hopefuls in 2008 has
broken with him and backed embryonic stem-cell research.

If his political misfortunes last, "he'd be a Bill Clinton, who sat on
his hands" in the 1998 midterm elections, said Allan Lichtman, a
presidential historian at Washington's American University.

Still, a lot can happen in three years, and "it's not as if there's
some obvious successor, like (then-vice president) Al Gore in 2000,"
Lichtman told AFP.

"Bush has not too much time to turn things around before he becomes an
ever-lamer lame duck," said Davis, using the term for a second-term US
president's traditional loss of influence.

Bush had big plans for his second four-year term, so emboldened by his
reelection victory that he tackled a political taboo and vowed to
partly privatize the government's Social Security retirement program.

But collapsing support for the war in Iraq, where some 1,900 US troops
have been killed since the March 2003 invasion, and widespread
criticism of Washington's response to the storms have taken the wind
out of his sails.

"His legislative agenda has stalled," said Davis, who noted that even
some of his staunchest conservative backers are complaining
increasingly loudly and bitterly about the sharp rise in government
spending on his watch.

Still, Bush's nominee for chief justice of the US Supreme Court, Judge
John Roberts, seems on course for Senate confirmation, setting the
stage for what could be a contentious battle over the president's pick
to fill the court's other vacancy.

"I think he picks a fight" with his other nominee, predicted Davis. "My
guess is that it's going to be someone who will arouse strong
reactions. He wants to rally the base with this one."

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