Bush in bog

President George Bush may feel a kinship with Harry Truman, the thirty-third President of the United States.

Bush's job approval rating has dwindled to 28%, at the very low end of the spectrum of approval ratings Gallup has recorded across the 11 presidents in office since the Second World War. A triple whammy of worries over the economy, historically high gas prices, and a deeply unpopular war has contributed to the rating. The percentage of Americans who are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States has fallen at a similar rate over the last eight years and is now at only 15%.

On a year-by-year basis, Bush's ratings have gone from 68% and 71% averages in his first two years to 33% in his seventh year. His rating is on a par with Jimmy Carter -- who had a low point of 28% in 1979 -- Richard Nixon and Harry Truman, who suffered ratings in the low- to mid-20% range in the final years of their administrations.

Truman parallel

The parallels with Truman are particularly startling. Both men's parties lost control of Congress. Both unflinchingly backed an unpopular war. In February 1952, Truman's approval rating stood at 22%, the result of a Korean War-weary public outraged by the president's decision to appropriate most of the country's steel mills for the ostensible purpose of maintaining production of critical munitions. The folksy, unassuming Truman also had low sustained approval ratings: in the final three years of his second term, his approval rating never inched past the low thirties. 

Bush will take a quantum of solace from history. Popular assessments of Truman's presidency became more positive after his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs; Bush will hope that historians are similarly kind to his legacy. Unlike Truman, Bush also holds the record high approval rating, over 93%. This was recorded just after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, and is the highest job approval rating in Gallup history.

Allergic Democrats?

Bush's low rating in the current poll is the result of an extraordinarily low (6%) average approval rating from Democrats, a low level of support (24%) from independents, and support from two-thirds (66%) of his base of Republicans. The 60% differential between Democrats and Republicans is particularly staggering.