"I don't know what percentage of me is Midland," George W. Bush said four years ago, "but I would say people, if they want to understand me, need to understand Midland and the attitude of Midland." In Bush's rhetoric, the West Texas town is populated by people just like him--hard-workin', straight-shootin' entrepreneurs tempered by the Protestant work ethic and evangelical Christianity. We know what Midland symbolizes in Bush-speak, but how is the town faring four years later?

At first glance, Bush seems as popular as ever in the "Tall City"--an allusion to the cluster of downtown skyscrapers rising off the featureless Texas plains. Signs on I-20 welcome visitors to the "Hometown of George and Laura Bush: Where the Sky's the Limit." The tourist office at the Chamber of Commerce proudly displays Bush paraphernalia behind glass cases, as if the hats and T-shirts proclaiming "Midland Is Bush Country" and "Bush/Cheney '04" were precious artifacts, not campaign propaganda.

Yet down the quiet cul-de-sacs as wide as landing strips, there is a rumble of discontent. "I've seen the very character of the Republican Party change in Texas," a retired schoolteacher named Marianne told me. Marianne is, in many ways, a typical white-collar Midlander: a lifelong Republican and member of the country club, she refers to domestic workers as "the help." Although she won't denounce Bush publicly ("It would be social suicide, honey," she says about her refusal to divulge her last name), she decries the Tom DeLay-led takeover of the GOP. "Texas Republicans used to be upstanding people. You could count on their word. Not anymore."

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