[+/-] The Bush agenda is kaput

A CBS-New York Times poll released yesterday trumpets a resounding defeat for Bush's policies and his presidency:

Almost two-thirds, 63 percent, said rebuilding the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina is more important to them than changing Social Security, and almost three-fourths, 73 percent, said rebuilding the flooded city is more important to them than cutting taxes, according to a CBS-New York Times poll released Wednesday.

A large majority of Americans, 73 percent, said they think their taxes will increase as a result of Katrina. More than half of those polled said they were willing to pay more taxes to help with Katrina recovery, job training and housing for victims.

Sidney Blumenthal compellingly posits the reason behind the continuing drop in Bush's support:

Bush's entire presidency and reelection campaign were organized around one master idea: He stood as the protector and savior of the American people under siege.... The deepest wound is not that he was incapable of defending the country but that he has shown he lacks the will to do so. In Bush's own evangelical language, he revealed his heart.

Overnight, the press disclosed a petulant, vacillating president it had not noticed before.... a "rigid and top-down" White House where aides are petrified to deliver bad news to a "yelling" president. [Where] top White House aides, who "cringe" before the "cold and snappish" president, met to decide which of them would be assigned the miserable task of telling Bush he would have to cut short his summer vacation.