It ain't working

Of course, this could all change tonight, after C-Plus Nero gives a speech penned by some idiot like Peggy Noonan, full of stuff about the innate goodness of Americans opening their wallets so his Administration doesn't have to; and about giving "choices" to Hurricane Katrina survivors, which is just code for turning them into some huge right-wing social experiment; after which Tim Russert and Bob Schieffer and Brit Hume will have simultaneous orgasms about how Bush has his mojo back.

But for now, all the White House spin change from "blame game" to "Ok, I said I took responsibility, now let's move on and privatize Social Security already" isn't helping Bush in the polls:

For the first time, just half of Americans approve of Mr. Bush's handling of terrorism, which has been his most consistent strength since he scored 90 percent approval ratings in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 6 in 10 now say that he does not share their priorities for the country, 10 percentage points worse than on the eve of his re-election last fall, while barely half say he has strong qualities of leadership, about the same as said so at the early low-ebb of his presidency in the summer of 2001.

More Americans now distrust the federal government to do the right thing than at any time since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And the poll revealed a sharp racial divide. While half of all respondents disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled the aftermath of Katrina, nearly three quarters of blacks do. (Mr. Bush won only about 10 percent of the black vote last year.)

[snip]

Taken together, the numbers suggest that a public that has long seen Mr. Bush as a determined leader, whether it agreed with him or not, has growing doubts about his capacity to deal with pressing problems. More than 6 in 10 said they were uneasy about his ability to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq, and half expressed similar unease about his ability to deal with the problems of the storm's victims.

Mr. Bush's support remained strong among Republicans, conservatives, evangelical Christians and those who said they voted for him last fall. Nearly twice as many people - 63 percent - said the country was "pretty seriously" on the wrong track as those who said it was headed in the right direction, equal to the worst level of Mr. Bush's presidency during a spate of bad news last year.

Over all, 41 percent of respondents approved of Mr. Bush's performance in office, while 53 percent disapproved.

41% is nothing for him to crow about. If you figure that there's a hard-core base of about 28-35% who would support Bush if he declared himself dictator-for-life and had his own reality show in which parents compete to see whose child gets to be molested by him; that leaves 6-13% still clinging to hope that he's really not as bad as he looks.

The question for our side is this: What do we have to do to convince that 6-13% to face reality?