Wall Street Journal - An increasingly gloomy political environment has soured Americans on President Bush and Congress, scrambled the Republicans' 2008 field, and strengthened Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
As the Iraq war drags on and Washington is embroiled in inconclusive policy debates, just 19% of Americans now say the nation is head in the right direction. More than three times that proportion, 68%, say things in the U.S. are "off on the wrong track." That's approaching the most pessimistic mood in the history of the WSJ/NBC poll.
At the same time, Mr. Bush's job approval rating has fallen to his lowest-ever level of 29%, while 66% disapprove his handling of the presidency. The telephone survey of 1,008 adults, conducted June 8 to 11 by Republican pollster Neil Newhouse and his Democratic counterpart Peter Hart, carries a margin for error of 3.1 percentage points.
The fallout from that bleak mood affects the Democratic-controlled Congress as well as the Republican president. Just 23% of Americans approve the performance of Congress, matching the finding of the Journal/NBC poll from one year ago as the Republicans then holding House and Senate majorities headed toward defeat in November mid-term elections.
Wonder what those numbers for Congress would look like if they had managed to vote against the Iraq Supplemental and get that No Confidence vote for Alberto Gonzales through.
