A new poll provides PROOF that in the end President George Bush has proven to be a uniter, not a divider — a President who has left his memorable mark on history:
A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.
This also suggests that a new national sport in coming months will be keeping track of Republican presumptive nominee John McCain putting distance between himself and Mr. Bush:
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.
“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Sometimes people don’t give politicians enough credit for their achievements. It is only fair to applaud Mr. Bush, since it took a lot of hard work to achieve this status. MORE:
“Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon (22 percent and 24 percent, respectively) but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland added. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 66 percent disapproval in January 1952.”
CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, “He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974.” President Nixon’s disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 67 percent.
For those of us who lived through that era….this is quite an achievement. AND:
The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower.
But who will tell Sean Hannity?
Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war while 68 percent opposed the conflict.
“Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war,” Holland said. “In January, nearly half believed that things were going well for the U.S. in Iraq; now that figure has dropped to 39 percent.”
The numbers on the Iraq war come on the five-year anniversary of President Bush’s “mission accomplished” moment onboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when Bush proclaimed that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
The record low support for the war in a CNN poll could be one reason behind the president’s unpopularity, but it probably is not the only one.
“Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same — bad,” Schneider said.
Watch McCain closely. McCain remains popular among independents due to the political capital he has built up from his 2000 race. But with Bush so increasingly unpopular, even if the Arizona Senator faces a personally distrusted Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama trying to run a race with his open-mouthed pastor sitting and pounding on his shoulders — or both on the same ticket — McCain may face a tough sell. Because many voters may decide that the top priority is to use the election as a big broom to sweep the present crew (and its party) out.
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.