This sort of thing is becoming repetitive. Though not boring. George has set a new low in (yet another) poll; this time, it's the Newsweek poll. He's at 30 percent approval overall, and there's this wonderful statistic:
[M]ore than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86 percent), and is shared by a clear majority (59 percent) of independents and even one in five (21 percent) Republicans.
Yikes.
Congress is being criticized, for not doing enough to rein in the administration:
Congress is criticized by nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans for not being assertive enough in challenging the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. Even a third (31 percent) of rank-and-file Republicans say the previous Congress, controlled by their party, didn’t do enough to challenge the administration on the war.
Memo to the Senate: There had best be something coming beyond whatever non-binding resolution ends up passing next week. The country wants, needs you to put the brakes on.
There's some polling on the 08 race which I'll skip (too early to say anything meaningful), and a final paragraph about Bush's chance for a legacy:
With Bush widely viewed as an ineffectual “lame duck” (by 71 percent of all Americans), over half (53 percent) of the poll's respondents now say they believe history will see him as a below-average president, up three points from last May. The first time this question was asked, in October 2003, as many people thought Bush would go down in history as an above average president as thought we would be regarded as below average (29 to 26 percent). Only 22 percent of those polled think Bush's decisions about Iraq and other major policy are influenced mainly by the facts; 67 percent say the president's decisions are influenced more by his personal beliefs. This perhaps explains why only about half (49 percent) of adult Americans even bothered to watch or listen to any of the State of the Union speech as it happened. Of those, less than half (42 percent) think his energy, health care and other domestic policy proposals are likely to be seriously considered by the new Democratic-controlled Congress. Overall, 61 percent are unsatisfied with the way things are going in America; just 30 percent are satisfied.
-dms