That is how they won the last gubernatorial election in Maryland - by adding Michael Steele, who is black, as a side kick to Ehrlich who otherwise is a closet racist. I am pretty sure they will try to emulate that strategy.
However, we need to look at a broader picture. People get pissed at Bush for gutting FEMA, and rightfully so, but this I think goes well beyond the feeble response of any federal agency. It is about the very essence of the US society which - as the NO disaster makes it clear - is held together by a thin veneer of civility cash dollops dished out by the government, which if taken away, produces a dissolution of any order and civility.
This situation reminds me of remarks made by Trotsky and Gramsci about, respectively, the prospect of a revolution in Russia and the lack of such prospects in Western Europe. Both pointed to the strength of civic institutions independent of government as the force that prevents social order form collapsing when things get out of hand. Trotsky saw the absence of such institutions as the prognosis of a successful revolution in Russia while Gramsci saw the presence of such institutions in Western Europe as a factor explaining why revolutions failed to make progress there.
So the real question is whether US is more like Russia or more like Western Europe. The NO disaster suggests that it is more like Russia - in the sense that beyond the federal government - and perhaps tee-vee - there is very little that holds this whole country together. Take that away, and everything slips into jeder fuer sich und Gott gegen alles, everyone for himself and a war of all against all.
Anarchists, like Chuck0, and various Third Partists on this list see it as an opportunity the get beyond the Democrat/Republican duopoly, but I think they are essentially too optimistic if not altogether wrong. First of all, the duopoly is merely an outcome of-, a shadow if you will, not the cause of, the power structure in the US society (as Dewey aptly observed). Therefore, the attenuation of that shadow will not change that structure.
Too much emphasis is being put on electoral politics in the US, the let-get-our-man-to-office syndrome, an too little - on structural problems that will not be attenuated by a few elections. The chief reason why both FDR and Reagan succeeded in revolutionizing this society in very different directions is waning and waxing of power of the oligarchy that owns most of this country - it was at its nadir under FDR and at its zenith under Reagan. So if by some historical accident a third party candidate or even an anarchist get elected president, the only thing that would change is presidential rhetoric, while everything else would be business as usual.
It is not enough to attenuate the political shadow to change the status quo in the US. However, I doubt that changing that structure is possible, at least in the foreseeable future. The main reason is the internal conflicts and differences, which like seismic fault lines, are buried under the thin layer of outer surface. These conflicts and differences will keep producing social relations we already have, despite of any political efforts short of strong arm authoritarianism, to change the class/caste structure of this society.
The US is not an organic unity like most Western European countries, but a social Frankenstein hastily put together by various social engineers. In that respect, it looks more like Russia, or Africa, than like Western Europe. While I strongly believe that some diversity is healthy, too much of it is poisonous, especially if that diversity is forced into the narrow confines of institutions that serve mainly elite interest. Modern Africa, where national boundaries were drafted by colonial powers with little or no regard for ethnic, cultural and demographic reality on the ground is a case in point.
The US society is very similar in this respect, the main difference is that its government was able to deliver more goodies than African governments. That explains why the US social Franskenstein remains relatively clam, while other social Frankensteins, like Russia or post-colonial Africa are plagued by permanent internal conflicts that periodically erupt into full scale wars or genocides.
What the NO disaster demonstrates, however, is that this government-maintained social peace and civility is not particularly stable and prone to disintegration. This is, imho, a far more important lesson than, say, demonstrating the idiocy of the Bush administration or even the last 25 years of the conservative rule in this country as Carl R. noted.
If somebody posed the question "Will the United States survive to the year, say, 2020?" the NO disaster seems to suggest a cautious "No" answer. The lesson of this disaster is that the strings that hold the US social Frankenstein together are not that strong after all. It is quite possible that by 2020 the government will be unable to deliver enough cargo (cheap gas and schlock, big cars, suburban Mac-mansions, etc.) to maintain the cult of America and buy relative social peace in this country - at which point internal conflicts will pull this society apart. Of course, it does not mean disappearance but rather following the Soviet trajectory of several semi-sovereign entities emerging from the process.
Wojtek