His reputation only improved in the light of what came after, as the Bush presidency crumbled, disaster followed disaster, and the number of Americans who believed the US was "on the wrong track" reached unprecedented levels.
If you were to believe scaremongering in the press, you might be forgiven for thinking the NHS is a crumbling, expensive disaster.
As portrayed by the property owners, the High Line is a crumbling, corroding "disaster waiting to happen" that looms depressingly over Chelsea, darkening streets and cutting off views of the Hudson River.
We need to invest in repairing and renewing our crumbling infrastructure before disaster strikes.
We faced a slower disaster: a corrupt ruling class, crumbling institutions, armed robberies, bad universities, despair.
In the World Trade Center disaster, exploding jet fuel and crumbling buildings may have charred and pulverized many bodies before and after they fell.
The statistics are both frightening and familiar, though they tend to come up only in the "crumbling infrastructure" articles that appear after major disasters.
Tom Hanks and Shelley Long move from a New York apartment to a crumbling suburban mansion where nothing works: the disasters, and the bills, just keep coming.
And they deserve to do so coming from somewhere other than a tragically empty classroom, or under a crumbling bridge, or in the midst of another disaster — or listening to the absurd debate, in Congress, over another manufactured crisis.
Not long before, the Crosby Journal editor Cecile Krimm called the region an "economic disaster area," citing swamped sewage systems, crumbling roads, dizzy rents and labor shortages as reasons that officials ought to be trying to brake a runaway train.
