Rich Lowry thinks so, too

From the Corner this morning, on the president's poll numbers:

...the danger to the White House is that there is now massive pressure to “move to the center” in various ways (say, the next Supreme Court appointment) and, in his reduced state, these pressures will be more difficult to resist. If he gives in to them on something important, he loses his base, and then it's Bush I all over again. You already see some of this erosion happening with regard to the Katrina spending. One last point: in the initial days after Katrina various folks in here--I think JPod in particular--wrote that we were watching some of the political lifeblood getting drained from the Bush presidency. Unfortunately, they were exactly right. It is going to take months and months of spadework to try make up for the missed opportunities of those first 24 or 48 hours.