Gallup: Bush’s March Numbers Lowest For Second Term President

Will there be some mid-course political corrections at the White House? It’s going to be fascinating to watch in coming months since Gallup now says its latest poll puts President George Bush at a record settting low point for a second term President:

NEW YORK President George W. Bush’s approval rating has plunged to the lowest level of any president since World War II at this point in his second term, the Gallup Organization reported today.



“All other presidents who were re-elected to a second term had approval ratings well above 50% in the March following their re-election,” Gallup reported. Bush’s current rating is 45%. The next lowest was Reagan with 56% in March 1985.



Gallup noted that more challenges lie ahead for Bush, including public doubts about his Social Security plan and Iraq policies.



Here are the ratings for presidents as recorded by Gallup in the March following their re-election:



Truman, 1949: 57%.

Eisenhower, 1957: 65%.

Johnson, 1965: 69%.

Nixon, 1973: 57%.

Reagan, 1985: 56%.

Clinton, 1997: 59%

Bush, 2005: 45%

It’s unlikely this will remain the way it is. It’s either going to continue to go down or there will be some kinds of policy or strategical political changes.

Traditionally second terms have not been happy ones for Presidents and the more the term goes on the more support they lose due to various factors: hubris, poor choices or the inevitable lame-duck status that kicks in. George Bush and Karl Rove have defied political conventional wisdom before and it’ll be interesting to see if they do it again. But its hard to spin this as good news (unless the usual attack is made on the pollster’s methodology which still will not obscure an overall downward trend).