President Bush's approval ratings appear to be dropping to their lowest levels ever -- and this time, to the enormous apprehension of the White House, there's something voters can do about it.
Officially, the White House refuses to even consider the possibility of a Democratic takeover of Congress in the November 7 elections. (As Ken Herman writes for Cox News Service, "It's a question the White House has banished to the won't-dignify-it-with-an-answer category.")
Maybe that's because it's hard for anyone -- Bush fan or foe -- to imagine how different a Bush presidency would be with a Congress that doesn't bend to his will and maybe even starts to question him.
And while it's too soon to count Karl Rove and the White House political machine out, it's going to be awfully hard for Bush to come to the rescue of his party when his lack of credibility is the cause of so many of its problems.
A lot was made about Bush's fall in the polls this summer, but if you look at what was happening then, people kept mixing and matching polls by comparing numbers from one poll with numbers from another or making a big deal out of lower numbers that fell within the margin of error. It was less a continous slide in the polls than it was holding steady at about a very low 35%.
Bush's got a little bump from the fifth anniversary of 9/11 (I still can't figure out how the greastest intelligence failure in US history reflects well on Bush, but there ya go), but they crashed lower than August after it wore off. Currently, Newsweek polls the President at 33% -- a personal worst.
Currently, in unscientific polling, 67.77% find George W. Bush annoying.
Tags: news politics Bush poll Dan Froomkin
