A few months ago we added Rasmussen Reports to OTHER VOICES on our blogroll, because that poll proved so accurate in 2004 and its site offers a daily Presidential approval rating.
Now Rasmussen has a new poll that shows President George W. Bush has broken a record for the lowest poll:
Sunday April 16, 2006–Thirty-nine percent (39%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That’s the lowest level of approval ever measured by Rasmussen Reports.
Sixty percent (60%) disapprove of Bush’s job performance, the highest level ever recorded.
You have to look at this now and project: will the latest controversy over the six retired generals calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to be replaced help or hurt Bush even more? Bush, the Pentagon and the GOP elite are standing by Rumsfeld.
The trend seems to be now of a White House fending off a Credibility Or Other Kind Of Crisis Of The Week — nearly every week, having to move heaven and earth to rally its loyal partisan base and get the infomachine (government agencies, talk radio shows, politicos and other and people who will defend the White House) and go on the attack against the source of negative news and slip into high gear.
The key questions:
(1) Will GOPers in Congress continue to hitch their political careers to this White House or will they try to find ways to keep a more discreet distance?
(2) And what should or can the White House do to at least halt the poll slide and political bleeding, or even try to reverse the trend?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.