US President George W. Bush, in a bitter showdown with the Democrat-majority Congress over Iraq, has crept up a speck from an all-time low in his job approval rating. But his standing is the weakest of any second-term president at this point in 56 years.
The numbers in the latest AP-Ipsos poll gave the White House little reason for cheer as Bush opened a weeklong visit to Latin America to bolster US influence in the face of rising anti-American sentiment.
Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, which is about to begin its fifth year, and opposition to his decision to send more troops into combat, Bush had an approval rating of 35 percent in early March. Still, that was up from 32 percent last month when his rating was tied for an all-time low in AP-Ipsos polling.
It now stands where it was in mid-January and in a range of where it was for most of last year.
Seizing on voters' frustration with the war, House Democrats challenged Bush with legislation Thursday requiring the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq by October next year. It would mark the first time the new Democratic-controlled Congress has established a date certain for the end of US combat.
The White House was quick to say Bush would veto the measure.
"It would unnecessarily handcuff our generals on the ground, and it's safe to say it's a non-starter for the president," presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said.
Bush's approval rating has not gotten above the 50 percent mark in AP-Ipsos polling since December 2004. Gallup has been tracking a similar job approval measure for presidents since the 1930s.
By Gallup's measure, Bush's numbers are the lowest for any president in the third March of his second term since Harry Truman in March 1951, when his approval rating was 28 percent.
The comparable numbers for other second-term presidents at this point were: Clinton 65 percent in March 1999, Reagan 45 percent in March 1987, Johnson 46 percent in March 1967 and Eisenhower 50 percent in March 1959.
Across the board, Bush's approval rating on a range of issues remained essentially changed from last month. Handling the economy was 41 percent, handling domestic issues was 37 percent, handling foreign policy issues and the war on terror was 38 percent and handing the situation in Iraq, 32 percent.
The only groups that noticeably increased their approval of Bush were women over 45 years of age, whose approval rating climbed 10 points to 33 percent compared with last month, and investors with family incomes between US$25,000 to US$50,000, whose approval rating climbed 11 points to 29 percent.
Bush also gained support among people living around the Great Lakes, where the approval rating jumped 12 points to 40 percent, and in Great Plains and Mountain States, where it was up 10 points to 36 percent.
The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults was conducted March 5-7. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Furthering the growing interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs), or what the US government refers to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the US Department of Defense on Thursday confirmed that photos and videos of UFOs leaked in the past few months were legitimate and taken by US Navy personnel. Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough confirmed to CNN that images and footage of a blinking triangular object in the sky, along with other aerial phenomena that were categorized as a “sphere,” “acorn” and “metallic blimp,” were taken by navy personnel in 2019. Gough told CNN that the department would not comment further on the
DRAWING DISMAY: Giving a forum to the coup leaders at the 10-country bloc’s talks in Jakarta this weekend would legitimize their rule, democracy advocates said Burmese Army Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is to join a special ASEAN summit on the weekend in his first official trip since masterminding a coup which deposed Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday. The Feb. 1 coup triggered a massive uprising in Myanmar, bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets to demand a return to democracy, while civil servants have boycotted work in a bid to shutter the junta’s administration. The Burmese military junta has deployed lethal force to quell the anti-coup movement, killing more than 720 people and
AMID NEGOTIATIONS: Tehran for the first time confirmed that there was an explosion at its main nuclear facility on April 11, but denied that it was caused by a cyberattack Iran on Saturday named a suspect in the April 11 attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges, saying that he had fled the country “hours before” the sabotage happened. While the extent of the damage from the sabotage remains unclear, it comes as Iran tries to negotiate with world powers over allowing the US to re-enter its tattered nuclear deal and lift the economic sanctions it faces. Already, Iran has begun enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity in response — three times higher than ever before — although in small quantities. The sabotage and Iran’s response have further inflamed
China could see its number of births fall to less than 10 million annually in the next five years if the government does not quickly abolish its policy of limiting families to two children, an expert was quoted by media as saying. China’s total population might also fall in a few years, Guangdong Academy of Population Development director Dong Yuzheng (董玉整) told Yicai, a Chinese financial news outlet. The number of babies born in China fell by 580,000 to 14.65 million in 2019 and the birthrate of 10.48 per thousand was the lowest since 1949 when present methods of collating data
RSS