Sorry if this is a repeat -- marta
 Two-In-Three Critical Of Bush's Relief Efforts
Huge Racial Divide Over Katrina and Its Consequences
The American public is highly critical of President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Two-in-three Americans (67%) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28% think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush’s overall job approval rating has slipped to 40% and his disapproval rating has climbed to 52%, among the highest for his presidency. Uncharacteristically, the president’s ratings have slipped most among his core constituents – Republicans and conservatives.
The disaster has triggered a major shift in public priorities. For the first time since the 9/11 terror attacks, a majority of American say it is more important for the president to focus on domestic policy than the war on terrorism. And the poll finds that Katrina has had a profound psychological impact on the public. Americans are depressed, angry and very worried about the economic consequences of the disaster. Fully 58% of respondents say they have felt depressed because of what’s happened in areas affected by the storm. In recent years, this percentage is only surpassed by the 71% that reported feeling depressed in a survey taken just days after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 6-7 among 1,000 Americans, including an oversample of African Americans, finds a huge racial divide in perceptions of the disaster and lessons to be learned from Katrina’s aftermath. For example, 71% of blacks say the disaster shows that racial inequality remains a major problem in the country; a majority of whites (56%) feel this was not a particularly important lesson of the disaster. And while 66% of blacks think that the government’s response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the storm’s victims had been white, an even larger percentage of whites (77%) disagree.
The survey finds that while the hurricane has drawn broad public attention, spiraling gas prices have attracted as much interest as reports on the storm’s impact. Roughly seven-in-ten are paying close attention to each story (71% gas prices, 70% hurricane’s impact). That represents the highest level of interest in gas prices in the two decades of Pew’s News Interest Index.
Huge Racial Divide Over Katrina and Its Consequences Two-In-Three Critical Of Bush's Relief Efforts View complete report
To remove your email address from this distribution list, enter your email here: http://people-press.org/reports/remove.php3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050908/34590d9c/attachment.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: emailbanner.gif Type: image/gif Size: 2231 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20050908/34590d9c/attachment.gif>
