Worse Than Cheney
Bush Approval Thuds to 28 Percent
Pierre Tristam / Candide’s Notebooks, April 26, 2007

"My job is a job to make decisions. I'm a decision—if the job description were, what do you do—it's decision maker."—Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007 [from the Bushisms of the Day]

The Wall Street Journal reports that Bush's approval rating, in the latest Harris Poll, hit its lowest level since inauguration, although "he's not alone: For the first time since the series began, all of the political figures and institutions included in the survey have negative performance ratings. Of the 1,001 American adults polled online April 20-23, only 28% had a positive view of Mr. Bush's job performance, down from 32% in February and from a high of 88% in the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." Just as remarkable: Bush's negative rating of 70 percent is two points higher than Dick Cheney (even though Cheney's approval rating of 25 percent is still lower than Bush's). A few caveats. On PollingReport.com, where all the major polls are tabulated, Bush is still in the mid-30s according to most polls except CBS, which has him at 31 (CBS usually has him lower than most). The highest disapproval rating among those is 62 percent. But does approval or disapproval matter anymore? The numbers make no difference in the way Bush conducts himself. To the contrary. He may even use them to his advantage, playing the beleaguered card, as he surely will in his showdown with Congress over the Iraq war bill. His spinners will make him look besieged and turn the issue in his favor: he's the one denying the troops their funding and equipment, he's the one denying them the right to come home, yet he'll be the one who'll come out looking like the hero.

The full results of Harris: