Bush's Downward Slide

"And pessimism over Iraq is at record highs on every score: nearly two in three Americans, 64 percent, believe the United States is losing ground there; 66 percent say the war has not made America safer from terrorism (just 29 percent believe it has); and 53 percent believe it was a mistake to go to war at all, again the first time the Newsweek poll has registered a majority in that camp."

Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder write in the New York Times: "Mr. Bush's job approval rating has slipped to 34 percent, from 37 percent in September. That is one of the lowest levels of his presidency and poses a complication for the White House as it seeks to send him out on the road to rally base voters. Mr. Bush's job-approval rating has even slipped with his base: 75 percent of conservative Republicans approve of the way he has handled his job, compared with 96 percent in November 2004.

"The president clearly faces constraints as he seeks to address the public concerns about Iraq that have shrouded this midterm election: 83 percent of respondents thought that Mr. Bush was either hiding something or mostly lying when he discussed how the war in Iraq was going. . . .

"The number of Americans who approve of Mr. Bush's handling of the campaign against terrorism dropped to 46 percent from 54 percent in the past two weeks, suggesting that he failed to gain any political lift from an orchestrated set of ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks."

Here are those results .

Joseph Carroll writes for the Gallup Poll: "A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that 37% of Americans approve of the way President George W. Bush is handling his job as president. This marks a seven-point drop from Gallup's most recent poll in mid-September, but is generally in line with Bush's average approval rating since June. The current poll also finds a decline in Bush's rating on Iraq, now at a new low, and terrorism, but little change in his ratings on the economy. . . .

"Seventy-seven percent of Republicans approve of Bush, compared with 31% of independents and 12% of Democrats. Bush's current approval ratings among Democrats and independents show little variation in recent months, but Republicans' ratings of Bush dropped nine points since mid-September and are at their lowest level since June."

Abandon Ship -- Just Not Yet?

Jake Tapper blogged for ABC News on Friday: "Now today comes word from Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, that two other Senate Republicans have told him they'll break with the White House Iraq strategy.

"But here's the hook -- they won't do so until after the November elections.

"'Two leading Republican Senators have come to me,' Biden recalled, and said that after the election 'the need to protect the president will be nonexistent' and Republicans will be freer to break with the White House and call for change in Iraq."

Rove's Top Aide Resigns

A massive ethics scandal that has spawned criminal prosecutions on Capitol Hill and on K Street claims its first victim deep in the heart of the White House.

You'd think that would be more than a one-day story, wouldn't you?