[For what it's worth, it looks like NY Times columnist David Brooks has bailed on GWB. Brooks' column today claims that the country was more demoralized in the '70s -- i.e., before the Glorious Gipper set things straight -- than it is now, but it ends on this note:]
... Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.
Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04brooks.html>
Carl