Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks at the Republican Governors Association Reception at the National Building Museum in Washington, February 27, 2006. The reception comes as some Republican governors fear a series of missteps by the White House may take a toll on election-year results for the party back home. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Looks like it is time for some polling numbers here. This is from CBS News:

(CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.

In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last SeptemberÂ’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.

Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.

For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story.

Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney a more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.

This is a huge drop in Bush's approval ratings--especially since the president has been spending time on the PR-campaign trail to drum up support for his policies. The issue here is that all this White House political campaigning is being drowned out by the continued scandals, screw-ups, and the general incompetence the White House has for effective governing. The whole Portgate scandal is a perfect example of President Bush thinking about his corporate cronies over that of the average American--let alone the security issues this sale has raised. President Bush starting touting new energy breakthroughs, and even toured the National Renewable Energy Laboratory last week. Of course, no one told the White House that they had cut funding for the lab, forcing the lab to lay off 32 people just before Bush's visit--oh dear, have to add more funding to keep those people employed for Bush's visit! I'm not even going into the disaster of Iraq. There's the illegal domestic spying scandal, the Valerie Plame scandal, the Katrina fiasco, the Jack Abramoff lobbying connections with Bush, Cheney's secret energy policy--which was nothing more than a give-away to Big Oil and Big Energy corporate interests. It is disaster heaped upon disaster, heaped upon disaster.

What is astounding is that the Bush White House still believes they can politically spin these disasters to the American public. President Bush is decisive and resolute in threatening to use his veto power and fight against the evil Democrats that want to destroy the DP World port deal. Of course, both Democrats and Republicans are against this sale due to a lack of security concerns that the Bush administration ignored. The domestic spying scandal is a political non-issue for the Democrats that has damaged the U.S. ability to fight terrorism--the Democrats have given the terrorists our playbook. We should be searching for the whistle-blowers who revealed this successful terrorist-fighting program. Never mind that the White House is domestically spying on American citizens without a court order, or has done an end-run around the FISA Court. Just keep spinning the PR. The problem here is that as the American public compare the details of these disasters with the White House PR spin, the American public is losing its trust and confidence with the Bush administration's leadership. It is going to take more White House PR-spin to maintain their rapidly eroding base, even as the scandals and disasters continue to heap upon the White House.

It is just going to get worst.

There is one positive aspect about President Bush's sagging poll numbers. At least Bush's approval ratings are twice that of Vice President Cheney's approval ratings. I'm not sure what to make of that....