Matt Yglesius looks at polling data regarding Katrina, and makes some astute observations:

There’s some striking stuff in this CBS poll on Katrina. 58 percent disapprove of Bush’s handling of the hurricane, and just 38 percent approve. But consider this — only 20 percent say the federal government’s handling of the disaster was adequate, while 77 percent say it wasn’t. 24 percent say FEMA’s response was adequate and 70 percent disagree. How is it, then, that Bush is rated so much better than the federal government he heads, and the disaster agency run by his appointee, the much-beloved "Brownie?" This is part-and-parcel of a very frightening cult of personality that’s been erected around the person of George W. Bush ever since 9/11 with the effective complicity of the rightwing media.

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The view that it’s his fault when bad things happen — or, at a minimum, that it becomes his fault when he refuses to take corrective action — doesn’t seem to occur to a very large number of people.