Iraq. People got tired of stupidity and lies.
Corruption, morally and financially. The indictments and convictions didn't help.
A feeling of malaise and, if change didn't occur, it would never do so.
Pols who acts as if their power was god-given.
Katrina, Schiavo, stem cell controversies.

Hubris. People got tired of his smarmy smile. "Heh,heh,heh."

When he won the second time he came out and talked about his political capital. He said he was going to spend it. Apparently he wasn't very good at keeping his accounts balanced.

But Katrina finished him off. Showing concern from his airplane window. Showing concern for Trent Lott while his mother was bad-mouthing the New Orleans refugees. Telling Michael Brown what a good job he was doing while truckloads of ice aimlessly traveled the interstate highway system with no place to go.

After Katrina even conservatives started watching him with skepticism. Every person he lost who already supported him was a conservative. He didn't have anyone else to lose.

I see where you are coming from professor but I still think it was Katrina.  True Bush's poll numbers were already in the low 40's by the time of Katrina but poll numbers can fluctuate and possibly could have rebounded.  But as you point out once Katrina happened I don't think Bush ever saw 40% again.  It is a debatable point though because no one knows if his numbers would have rebounded if there was not a Hurricane Katrina. 

A spike in gas prices will cause unrest amongst the masses but I think that anger is directed more towards the oil companies rather than politicians unless there is clear cut evidence that politicians are aiding the companies in price gouging.  I do think Katrina brought everything into focus.  And the defining moment when focus occurred is when "You're doing a helluva job Brownie" came out of El Presidente's pie hole as the people of NOLA were drowning...it became obvious to almost everyone that if his judgement was so flawed about the job FEMA was doing in response to Katrina that the president's judgement should not be trusted then, now or in the future.

From the dates his ratings began their non-stop drop, it looks to me like it was Social Security and Schaivo. 

Bush made Social Security reform a big part of his State of the Union speech in early February and shortly after stood in front of a file cabinet filled with promissary notes from the US Government and announced that they were just paper.  Very reassuring to people who put personal retirement funds in other Treasuries.

The Schaivo fiasco took place in March and it peeled off a lot of Libertarians and many others.  I don't think DeLay et al realized how many people have had to make a decision like the Shaivo one.  They didn't need or want the reminder.

I agree with Libertine.

If you look at the track of the difference between approval and disapproval, you can see the association with Katrina more clearly than just looking at his approval numbers.

Katrina led to a big jump in the numbers of people, who really despise Bush. The approval number, which bounces between 30 and 40, is not the big story; it is the relative intensity of feeling. The people, who despise Bush, really, really despise him -- a very large proportion disapproving, disapprove strongly; the people, who approve, are less and less enthusiastic.

Both the net balance of approval/disapproval and the intensity of disapproval shifted significantly with Katrina.

In general, approval of Bush has been a matter of gradual erosion. For a while now, all Democrats disapprove, and most Democrats disapprove strongly.

Republicans approve, but with increasing faintness. The lack of enthusiasm, even among Republicans, for the Iraq "surge", is the first signal that Katrina was only the first shoe dropping.

With scandal, or increased violence in Iraq, Bush may well lose a large proportion of his Republican support, and do so quite suddenly.

That is the event to look for, now. As Bush falls thru the 30 floor, he will be entering hanging territory. Then, the real fun begins.

I think I will stick with the Social Security issue since it galvanized the blogosphere and hence the Democratic leadership was forced out the doldrums. Until then, blogs were not taken as seriously by the MSM, the political elites, and bloggers of other blogs, so there is some merit to Time Magazine's selection of the PoY.

I also think that SS privatization helped roll a huge number of older voters back into the D column, as it was the first break of trust with a large conservative leaning block which the Medicare reform solidified. I wonder how many parents of the MSM were rolled up in that fiasco.

In the end, I think we are attempting to define the tipping point as the crash and burning that followed. It is akin to cow tipping I suppose, in that the cow is falling over before it wakes up to that fact, although the tipping point occurs when one actually is in a position to push the cow over, not when you're jumping the fence after having done so. Between the thought and the action the tipping point lays. Social Security was the first red meat issue the D's had the muscle to win. The first cut and all that rot.

J. McCutchen

Along the same lines but using a different graphic, you readily see two sharp declines this year using Dr. Charles Franklin's Political Arithmetik trend line for the Bush presidency.

Specifically Jan/Feb 2006 and September.

In February the Imam Ali Shrine bombing. In Sept., the Foley scandal broke a sustained WH charm offensive which had shown signs of life in August

Similar analyses in 2003, 2004, 2005 show the same thing

IRAQ
IRAQ
IRAQ

Frank Rich makes the Katrina point well in The Greatest Story Ever Sold.

Tom

A cardinal rule of Multiple Choice questions.

Always have a

(d) All of the Above.   

aMike

It may have been the 2004 election itself that did Bush in. His troops labored mightily on his behalf but I think their work was fueled by a desparate need to prove something to themselves, as well as to us.

The Bush supporters I know all held on as long as they could even after it was clear he and his policies were disastrous. They really, really wanted to believe, and the last thing they wanted was to be let down.

After all the denial and hard work put into the Bush reelection, there came a moment when they realized what they had done, what they had re-committed themselves to, what was coming. That moment stretched into weeks, and months, and years of death, destruction and disillusionment.

When you put your faith in a leader and back him even when you are not sure he is right and he lets you down anyway, you hold on as long as you can, until you can hold on no longer.

My daughter said in 2003 that having George W. Bush as President was like having an abusive husband. She has reason to know. There comes a time when you know it has to end but you still try mightily to save it, knowing all along with a sinking heart that it has all been a horrible mistake.

I think that moment came for Bush supporters in January, 2005, about the time of the second inauguration. It was the 2004 election that was the beginning of the end of this particular marriage.

Bush remained popular for two basic reasons. One is that he was erroneously perceived as a "war president" and misinformed patriots had to like him or believe themselves to be unpatriotic. That got old. A second is that about 50% voted for him and admitting that you have made a blunder so extreme that it appears you were delusional is hard to do, so most of those voters had to like him to avoid hating themselves. That feeling wore out.

Bush's basic problem was that, except for the big boost he got by failing to perform his duty and playing "school boy" as the twin towers were taken down and the Pentagon badly damaged, (someday a serious psychologist will study that phenomena) he was revealed as utterly incompetent within a few months of taking office, and his approval ratings began a nearly unending slide. There has never been a way for him to reinvent himself as competent because he cannot speak our language without a script. His popularity slide was inevitable once he was placed in office.

Hoppy in Sacramento

A remedial course in Critical Thinking 101 wouldn't hurt either.

Tom

The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that there is no one thing, that if done differently, would have made that big of a difference. It's almost like asking which bucket of water caused the NOLA levees to fail.

"Americans" = "my fellow citizens"

I never trust a poll that doesn't expressly exclude the Confederacy.

"What's unfathomable is that 35% of Americans STILL voice approval"

Not at all unfathomable. I am a Yellow Dog Democrat, traditionally defined as someone who would vote for a mangy dog if it happened to make the ballot as a democrat. Because come what may my mangy dog is going to vote for Pelosi rather than Hastert. And when it comes down to it I wouldn't even have to like Pelosi. I would only need to believe that despite who is at the top or the bottom of the Party the country is better off with Democrats running it than Republicans.

I was Buck Fushing when Buck Fushing wasn't cool, I was pushing back against approval ratings that were pushing 90%. But I never despaired that the American people had just irrevocably lost their minds. I knew that a lot of people were simply uninformed, a lot more were simply rallying around behind a war-time president, and a certain amount were just instincively lining up behind a Republican President. The question then and now was what was the irreducible base, how screwed up a job could Bush do without driving away the "sure he is a fucked up asshole who is destroying the country but he isn't Teddy Kennedy or John Dean" crowd. Back in 2004 my dream was that we could drive Bush approval under 40%, because historically sub-40 is a death knell for any presidency. That we have him at 35% shows that he has been shoved back to the R equivalent of Yellow Dogs. A certain part of that support is likely to be composed of people who simply will not give those polling bastards the satisfaction of voicing their real opinion.

Bush is a Republican just like I am a Democrat and as such will get a certain amount of support just from the label. And a certain amount more just from being a war-time President. Some part of that 35% is reacting to either or both. Don't sell all of that 35% short, some of them are just clinging to certain other loyalties that are not directly tied to GWB. Being loyal to the Republican Party may seem illogical to you or me, but it is not a crime. And a certain amount of R-ness is going to swamp over to Bush 'approval'.

Point taken about intensity of feeling, BruceW07, but I don't see the Bush approval/disapproval spread ratio you see. According to Pollkatz, the spread takes a huge jump up during the month of August '05--before New Orleans drowned. It almost doubles during that month. If you want to attribute that to bump to any specific factor, credit Cindy Sheehan, who starts cropping up in news reports on August 7.

Todd Gitlin

I agree that the election itself was the tipping point. But it wasn't so much disillusionment among his supporters (they are mostly still with him) as it was the scorched-earth nature of the re-election campaign. It was surely the most un-Presidential campaign run by an incumbent in modern history. The strategy was really to bum swing voters out on Kerry (they were already bummed on Bush), and to play to the grossest fears and resentments of Bush's base. It was enough to get them to the shore, by the votes of a hundred thousand Ohioans. But since they had, so to speak, burned all the furniture and deck planks just to get that far, they had nothing left to govern with.

Terri Shiavo--The public said, "These guys are nuts." After that every other decision was questioned. Shirley

Well, how nice.

Very clearly stated.

Given that George W. Bush was the great white hope of almost half of America in 2000, and that the country mostly put aside its differences and turned to him for leadership after 9/11, it is a testament to his incompetence and that of his inner circle that he has been able to squander even the support of many of the true believers.

I think there was no tipping point. Since the decline began immediately it is merely the public learning what they had gotten into with Bush.

We're saying tha same thing, I think.

Actually, I was taught that, in designing multiple choice questions, rarely have "all of the above" and never have "none of the above."

If you have lower than a ten percent turnover, there is a problem. And if you have higher than, say 20%, there is a problem.
Richard M. Nixon

LOL. I wonder, what ever was he talking about, tithing?

After he was re-elected in 2004 -- again by the narrowest of margins -- the country took its first big step back from Bush when he declared, "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style." Apparently the political gods (there must be such a thing or how else would this mediocre human have made it this far?) began their retreat, as well.
Since that time the Xenga house of power Bush built has steadily lost one supporting stick after another: Social Security (this was supposed to be an easy one that kept the boy king on the campaign trail while the real men -Cheney/Rumsfeld - handled the war); the drum beats from the dualing scandals of Abramoff and Libby as they built to their indictable crescendos; and don't forget the Spring time vigil for Terri Schiavo (the president was quiet, but his evangelical-base was not and it noticed). That was followed by Iran's election of Ahmadinejad in June, which kept Bush's losing streak going.
Then began the Summer of Cindy Sheehan. If you weren't hearing about the tragedy of Natalee Holloway in Aruba, it was wall-to-wall Sheehan, putting the hot beam of her magnifying glass on Bush and Iraq.
By that time, the country had taken enough steps back from Bush that the breeze from a butterfly's wings might have pushed it over the precipice of no return. What sealed the deal was a class 5 hurricane.
Bush hasn't recovered and neither has the Gulf Coast.

Major error by Bush--you never spend your capital, you invest it. But then again he doesn't have an impressive track record in business.

He sure did spend his capital, and now he has nothing to show for it. 

I don't get it, re: Social Security.

In 2004, the GOP made SS privatization one of their key planks at the Republican convention in NYC. It should have come as no surprise when Bush ran with it in 2005. Yet the many of the same people who kicked up a fuss about it in 2005 voted for Bush in 2004.

Again, I don't get it. I don't think SS had much to do with the disenchantment with the regime. It was the Schiavo fiasco that impacted many people at a much more visceral level, much as Katrina (and even Foley) did. If I was weighting (in descending order of visceral impact):

Schiavo
Katrina
Gas prices
Foley
Iraq
Medicare
Social Security

"you never spend your capital, you invest it" EXACTLY!!

And how did he spend it? On a sixty city tour he gathered hand picked baby boomers for a chior and lead them singing his "Government Is The Root Of All Evil" hymn.

But, I know more than a few Republican baby boomers who watched the 10PM newscast version of these events and saw their President look them in the eye, unable to repress the smirk of a used car salesman, and say in effect, "You're a goddamned idiot if you can't see how fuckin' smart I am on this issue".

Wrong audience!! The only certainty throughout their lives that most boomers have know is the certainty that they would not have to take care of mom in her old age. And the most sour blow many of them have had to endure was watching their own retirement investments on Wall Street go up in smoke. At the time my sister, a lifelong Republican, said, "We gave him a second chance to fix the broken pottery, not break more of it!".

If you really paid attention to the '04 campaign (unlike the mainstream political media), social security was clearly a Bush priority. Because it wasn't prominent in the Bush campaign and was largely ignored (or tacitly supported ala Broder) by the media , "reform" came across as a "bait & switch" to many people. It wasn't the reason that people voted for Bush and it wasn't a priority for the vast majority of the public. Schiavo was another disconnect--it was a violation of a familiy's privacy. It was na issue that most people felt undeserving of its level of intervention. Social Security and Schiavo simply came across as disconnected with the public's real concerns and values and the reasons that moderates and independents had for giving votes to Bush. Katrina and the incompetent response simply reinforced all of this and made it easier for people to solidify their opposition to Bush.

Right, interfere in Schiavo -- a private life and family --but ignore your public responsibility to the victims of Katrina.