And Then a Red Alert?

Kevin Drum, over at Political Animal, posts a very telling graph of Bush's approval ratings over the last three years.



You can see that his numbers today are even worse off than before 9/11, when his approval was pretty dismal. Since then, he's had three spikes, each less significant than the one before, all attributed to "rally around the flag" effects. His numbers continue to freefall, so what's next? Josh Marshall shared this bit on Monday:

There is chatter in Pakistani intelligence circles that the US has let the Pakistanis know that the optimal time for bagging 'high value' al Qaida suspects in the untamed Afghan-Pakistani border lands is the last ten days of July, 2004.

-- Josh Marshall

Well, we've all been taking bets and making predicitions as to whether capturing Osama would be Bush's "October surprise" to cinch the election. We all know that's simply not an option anymore, there is no cinch possibility left for Bush. Now come the very frightening days. They'll pull Osama out of a spider hole or cave, optimally in the last ten days of July. Why then? Well. Hmm. I wonder. Could it be that the 2004 Democratic convention will be underway in Boston, ruling the news cycle with an unrelenting summation of all the horrible things the Bush administration has put forth into the world? I've worried that Tommy Franks' "catastrophic event" might occur around then as well. If so, all bets are off.

I'd written a piece for a Mississippi paper dealing with this. It was never published. Perhaps I'll go through my files and post it here.