So, one wonders, how is it that the first major poll doesn’t show the president being damaged politically by the hurricane? Once again we see the gigantic divide in this country — not between Right and Left, but between people who live and breathe politics and those for whom politics are only an incidental part. You need to look at the world through political glasses to assume that THE key aspect of a natural disaster is the response or lack thereof of the authorities — whether they be local, state or federal. The president doesn’t MAKE hurricanes, therefore he will not be blamed FOR hurricanes. Nor do the governor and the mayor.

And though I have no doubt that this presidency has been damaged seriously by the hurricane’s aftermath, the effort to use it as a wedge against other policies — like the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice or even the emendation of the estate tax — represent a kind of opportunistic political overreach on the part of the president’s rivals that might come quickly to seem tasteless to much of the country.