Failure
WASHINGTON — An aide slipped President Bush a note during a staff meeting in the Oval Office on Friday morning with the news: Vice President Cheney's chief of staff would be indicted in the CIA leak case — the terrible end of a very bad week.
After fumbling the nomination of a Supreme Court justice and defending an unpopular war that has now cost more than 2,000 American lives, Bush finds his presidency at a new low. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday shows that a solid majority of Americans, 55%, now judge Bush's presidency to be a failure.
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In the USA TODAY poll taken this weekend, Bush's approval rating is 41%. That is lower than Reagan's standing at any time during the Iran-contra controversy or Clinton's rating during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
When Gallup asked in 1993 whether the first President Bush's tenure was a success or failure, 53% called it a success even though he had been defeated for re-election a year before. During Clinton's presidency, a majority never called his tenure a failure. Only once, after the health care debacle in 1994, did a plurality say it was a failure, by 50%-44%.
In January 1999, after he had been impeached by the House and was awaiting a Senate trial, 71% called Clinton's tenure a success.
But in August, by 51%-47%, those surveyed by USA TODAY called the current Bush presidency a failure. That proportion grew to 55%-42% in the poll over the weekend.
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