With a ‘vacation’ like George W. Bush had this summer, who needs stress? After spending a full month tangling with war mom Cindy Sheehan at her stakeout in Crawford, Texas, along comes a real and present danger to his leadership, Hurricane Katrina.

The drowning of New Orleans and the devastation along the Gulf Coast seems to be nothing short of another Sept. 11 — but unlike those first days after the terrorist attacks, when the president rallied the nation so effectively, he stumbled right after Katrina and is in danger of getting some of the blame for the chaos and violence caused in part by what local officials consider a slow federal response. On Friday, he played catch-up with a trip to assess the damage, and to spur federal officials to work better and faster to relieve the suffering.

Bush is not so well positioned to claim leadership in this crisis as he was four years ago. When he grabbed that megaphone on top of the World Trade Center rubble in 2001 and vowed to go after the perpetrators, he had two things going for him:

• Although not a blank slate, he was just nine months into his first term. Americans were still forming their initial impression of him and were open to the positive spin from his image makers.

• The attacks on New York and Washington presented a human enemy for the president to rally the nation against. In contrast, Bush now deals with Katrina’s destructive wake at a time when most Americans tell pollsters they disapprove of his presidency. And in this catastrophe there is no mortal nemesis to blame.

The White House image masters also seem to have lost their touch. Amazingly, in the first days after Katrina struck they traded the president’s post-Sept. 11 megaphone for a guitar. As Katrina was slamming its way ashore at dawn on Aug. 29 — and the extent of her fury was becoming clear — Bush went to San Diego to talk up his war policies. In one of the must stunning public relations miscues of his entire presidency, he posed for a picture strumming a guitar with entertainer Mark Wills.

As photographs of politicians tend to do, fairly or not, the guitar-picking president became a visual symbol. But instead of the get-tough action image that his megaphone became four years ago, this picture fueled critics who say he was slow to react to Katrina’s devastation.

Making things worse for Bush, the New Orleans Times-Picayune began pointing out what it had long reported before Katrina: the administration had cut funding for additional work on the levees that eventually ruptured and flooded the city. The newspaper and other local critics also maintain that the Iraq War not only diverted the levee funds, but also is keeping National Guard troops half a world away when their home states need them for security and rescue efforts.

By Aug. 31, when the White House finally wised up and got the president properly focused on the hurricane disaster, he gave a speech that seemed to do more harm than good. The New York Times, in an editorial that was harshly worded even by the standard of its anti-Bush leanings, wrote that it was “one of the worst speeches of his life,” saying that instead of providing “consolation and wisdom” in a time of national distress he delivered a “long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast.”

Even the Air Force One flyover on the same day — and the picture of Bush looking out the window at what’s left of New Orleans — made him appear oddly detached from the horror below. By week’s end, though, he was in full swing, with his on-the-ground visit and the tapping of his father and Bill Clinton to lead a relief fundraising effort.

The White House was caught off guard by Katrina, it can be assumed, because as this calamity was unfolding the president’s team was still dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Cindy. Finding a way to combat the growing public unrest about Iraq, so skillfully stoked by Sheehan’s Texas campground, was the only reason that Bush was on the road again selling his war strategy.

Now the White House must fear twin demons: a budding connection between Katrina and Cindy formed from the widespread belief that New Orleans could have been saved had not the Corps of Engineers been denied levee funds that instead went to Iraq.

Knocking down such ideas should be the first public relations priority of Bush’s advisers, along with a continued ramping up of federal relief efforts. Otherwise, they may find Sheehan camped out in Louisiana convincing people that the hurricane itself was Bush’s fault.

In some ways, Katrina is worse than Sept. 11 for the president. There is nowhere to invade and avenge the loss. There is only mind-boggling chaos and ruin to be managed. How much harder it will be for him to rebuild Iraq when a region of our own homeland seems worse off.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.