The water is going down slowly. The President's popularity is sinking like a stone

The Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina - lambasted on all sides of the political spectrum as disastrously slow if not also staggeringly insensitive - has sent the President's approval ratings plummeting.

A new poll published by AP put George Bush's popularity at below 40 per cent for the first time since he took office almost five years ago. Intriguingly, only 52 per cent of respondents said they specifically disapproved of his handling of the crisis along the Gulf coast. But 65 per cent - dismayed by soaring petrol prices and a whole panoply of other policy disappointments - said the country was heading in the wrong direction, up from 59 per cent a month ago. Even before the majority of the bodies have been fished out of the foul-smelling waters in New Orleans, the hurricane has triggered a knock-on political storm of rare intensity.