New York: A new poll suggests that President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. Survey released yesterday indicates that 71 per cent 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 per cent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.

"Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 per cent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 per cent and 24 per cent, 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 per cent disapproval in January 1952."

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 per cent.

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

"Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war," Holland said. "In January, nearly half believed that things were going well for the US in Iraq; now that figure has dropped to 39 per cent."

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 Bush are all about the same -- bad," Schneider said.
Source : PTI