SLEEPWALKING NATION Why has it taken so long to wake up to Bush? BY MARY ANN SORRENTINO

With three more years of W’s second term still to be endured, two-thirds of Americans now say they have no faith in his judgment, his policies, or his reasons for starting or continuing the war that has claimed more than 2000 American lives.

What do these people see now that they couldn’t see in 2004, when their enlightenment might have spared America and the world four more years of our president’s incompetence?

John F. Kerry wasn’t the top choice even among some Democrats, but he is a US senator of respectable standing, a man with enough intelligence and grace to get the job done — and certainly with more insight and polish than what we have now. Americans disliked Kerry’s aristocratic snobbery, but is it worse than the current White House’s hokey cowboy flavor, complete with smarmy wink and insider jabs to the ribs?

In 2004, Iraq was already a deadly mistake. The famous "weapons of mass destruction" weren’t surfacing, Cheney’s Halliburton war contracts — without bids — were a matter of public record, the erosion of human rights for Americans and their captors was obvious. So what has happened to open the eyes of all those flag-flying, ribbon-wearing people previously under W’s spell?

As George’s father knows, "It’s the economy, stupid!"

Beaten by hurricanes, floods, and fires, and the subsequent inadequate federal responses, Americans are hungry, tired, and angry. The housing market is cooling down faster than a furnace out of overpriced fuel. Stocks are falling and the post-holiday job picture isn’t pretty.

Social Security is as vulnerable as ever and W’s always-unpopular plan to privatize it is dead.

The deal made with the pharmaceutical companies, with the brainless support of AARP, leaves elders more disenfranchised than ever from the health-care and prescriptions they need. Scores of Medicare drug choices being rammed down seniors’ throats for 2006 create more confusion than assistance.

All of this was predictable and even evident in 2004 when America still had a chance to throw over W and save the country from further despair. What blinded the nation?

The country’s brain death smacks of national polls on simple critical questions; should homeless people be given shelter, or should we teach our children how to read? In the results, there is always a baffling number: the 5 percent or 15 percent who "don’t know" or "had no opinion."

The people just waking up to the George W. Bush nightmare must be living on the same planet as those who "don’t know" or "don’t care" what just hit them.

People out of touch with reality are responsible for the current mess we are in. Unfortunately for the rest of us, saying, "I told you so," won’t help much, and it won’t bring our dead soldiers back to life, either.