[southnews] Bush becomes worst US President says pol
 
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 11:20:44 -0500 (CDT)


US President George W. Bush has earned the highest disapproval rating 
for a President in the nation's history, according to a new poll 
released today.

The CNN/Opinion Research poll sows that more than seven in every ten 
Americans say they are disappointed in Mr Bush's performance, and say 
they disapprove of the way he is handling his job.

The poll shows that 71% of the over 1000 respondents believed that Mr 
Bush was doing a poor job at being the US President..

The poll was delivered nearly five years to the day since the President 
delivered his "mission accomplished" speech aboard a US aircraft 
carrier. The mission is now far from accomplished, with some 
commentators also questioning whether the Middle Eastern nation has 
actually gone backwards.
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Poll: More disapprove of Bush than any other president

By Paul Steinhauser
CNN Deputy Political Director
 9:17 p.m. EDT, Thu May 1, 2008

WASHINGTON DC (CNN) -- A new poll suggests that President Bush is the 
most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll shows 71 percent disapprove of 
President Bush's job performance.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 
percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is 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 Keating 
Holland, CNN's polling director.

"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 said. 
"The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by 
Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952."

While Gallup polling goes back to the 1930s, it wasn't until the Truman 
years that they began surveying monthly approval ratings.

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 66 percent

The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been 
lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war, while 68 
percent opposed it.

"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 Bush's 
"Mission Accomplished" moment on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham 
Lincoln, when he 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.
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The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted by telephone from 
Monday through Wednesday among 1,008 adult Americans