For almost five years, conservatives inside and outside the White House have refused to tell us what they really think about President Bush and the state of conservatism for fear of retaliation. Likewise, the media has generally been a lapdog, cowering in fear of accusations of liberal bias. But with Bush’s approval ratings at record lows and his departure from office looming, the dam appears to be breaking.

As Dan Froomkin points out, a slew of unflattering stories about Bush have been published in the aftermath of Katrina (see his article for links):

Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you’ve been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?

Maybe not so much.

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don’t emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies — the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department — has failed a big test.

Maybe it’s Bush’s sinking poll numbers — he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it’s the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush’s most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.

But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.

These stories were driven, in part, by rare blind quotes from high-level White House officials that portrayed Bush in an unflattering light. Via Kevin Drum, John Podhoretz notes the importance of this development:

What’s interesting about the stories [in Time and Newsweek] is that they suggest there’s been a change at the Bush White House because they feature unnamed sources saying nasty things about the president. One of the remarkable aspects of this White House has been the fanatical loyalty its people have displayed toward Bush — even talking to friendly journalists like me, it’s been nearly impossible to get past the feel-good spin. If that’s really changing, if staffers are beginning to separate themselves from their boss emotionally and indulge in on-background carping and cavilling, then two things are true. 1) Bush is about to suffer the agony that has afflicted all previous recent administrations — the “who said that!” rages that distract our leaders and make them feel isolated in their jobs. 2) News stories are about to get a whole lot more interesting, and White House reporters are going to stop complaining about how hard it is to cover Bush.

In addition, conservative pundits are starting to break away from Bush after years of marching in lockstep. As I’ve mentioned, David Brooks is castigating the GOP as “a party that doesn’t have a political philosophy” and admitting that “From Day One, [the Bush White House] had decided that our public relations is not going to be honest.” And, via Andrew Sullivan, the Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson is bashing the state of modern conservatism:

Conservative institutions, conceived for combat, have in power become self-perpetuating, churning their direct-mail lists in pursuit of cash from the orthodontist in Wichita and the Little Old Lady in Dubuque, so the activists can continue to fund the all-important work of . . . churning their direct-mail lists. The current story of Jack Abramoff’s lucrative self-dealing, involving as it does such movement stalwarts as Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, may seem lunatic in its excesses, but the excesses aren’t the point. The point is the ease with which the stalwarts commandeered the greasy machinery of Washington power. Conservative activists came to Washington to do good and stayed to do well. The grease rubbed off, too.

…Conservatism nowadays is increasingly a creature of its technology. It is shaped–if I were a Marxist I might even say determined–by cable television and talk radio, with their absurd promotion of caricature and conflict, and by blogs, where the content ranges from Jesuitical disputes among hollow-cheeked obsessives to feats of self-advertisement and professional narcissism… that would have been unthinkable in polite company as recently as a decade ago. Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the “author” on the cover. What a tumble! From The Conservative Mind to Savage Nation; from Clifton White to Dick Morris; from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman–all in little more than a generation’s time. Whatever this is, it isn’t progress.

What will we find out next?