When the magic ends!

George W. Bush has run a smoke and mirrors presidency. As we mentioned below the chief magician, Karl Rove has been a bit preoccupied in recent weeks and as a result when Katrina hit the Bush magic failed. Dan Froomkin had an excellent White House Briefing column yesterday where he discussed this that's worth a read if you haven't already. Over at the LA Times Robert Scheer discusses how Bush is Finally fooling none of the people.

THERE'S NEVER a terrorist around when you need one. Even a couple of suspicious-looking foreigners playing soccer near the Superdome as Katrina began to make landfall might have done the trick to get this easily distracted president focused. The war on terror is, after all, George W. Bush's obsession, obliterating any other consideration of the nation's well-being.

With a terrorist sighting, Bush likely would not have lingered on his Crawford ranch vacation, which he interrupted only for politicking and fundraising opportunities. Nor would Condoleezza Rice have gone shoe shopping while the world witnessed the sorry spectacle of the Gulf Coast in deadly disarray. And surely Donald Rumsfeld, who blithely attended a San Diego Padres game as New Orleans was filling with water, wouldn't have dithered for days before sending in troops to aid desperate Americans.

The FEMA that used to be.

During the Clinton years, FEMA was turned into a model of efficiency, as demonstrated after the Northridge earthquake and the Oklahoma City bombing. How bizarre, then, that in the wake of 9/11, the administration handicapped FEMA by axing its Cabinet-level status, turning it back into what some call a "turkey farm" for patronage jobs and slashing its budget because, as Allbaugh complained, it had become "an oversized entitlement program."

When people see through the smoke and mirrors.

Unfortunately, what the Bush White House is good at when it comes to national security is providing flash over substance, as Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana found out the hard way. After riding in a helicopter with the president and seeing machinery apparently working on the breached 17th Street levee, she was shocked the next day to find the work mysteriously stopped. "Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment," said the senator in a press release.

For far too long, this kind of shenanigan worked well for Bush, allowing him to narrowly win a second term. His administration was asleep at the switch on 9/11 even though "the system was blinking red," according to the then-CIA chief. Bush grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero and remade himself as a "war president" — and suffered no real political damage from the failure to either capture Osama bin Laden or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But, as one of this nation's greatest war presidents said, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. With the Iraq war grinding on with no end in sight and the postmortems of the Katrina debacle showing the White House and Homeland Security Department to have been as confused and inept as FEMA itself, Bush's support in several national polls has continued a steady plunge to below 40%. A Newsweek poll found that, for the first time, less than a majority of Americans felt Bush possesses "strong leadership qualities," his signature claim to fame. Boy, have they got that right.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll that came out yesterday had some really bad news for Bush, he's losing the Republicans.

Even some members of Bush's own party appear to have lost faith in their leader: The president's overall approval rating among Republicans has declined from 91 percent in January to 78 percent in the latest poll.

In the White House they must be asking "where has the magic gone"? And with the 2006 midterms a little more than a year away Bush himself may be looking radio-active to many Republican incumbents.