Kowtow if you want...

...but don't claim it's because the President is so popular. A majority of Americans now think Bush is doing a poor job overall.

George W. Bush’s approval rating is now a full twenty points lower than Bill Clinton’s was on the day he was impeached. Dear media, that means you gotta stop referring to him as a “popular president,” and no less important, stop treating him like one.

Furthermore, a really huge number think his handling of Iraq and of terrorism is flawed and may be making us less safe (check out those graphs!).

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, while two-thirds say the U.S. military there is bogged down and nearly six in 10 say the war was not worth fighting -- in all three cases matching or exceeding the highest levels of pessimism yet recorded. More than four in 10 believe the U.S. presence in Iraq is becoming analogous to the experience in Vietnam.

Who knows, we may yet discover that shit is still capable of hitting the fan . . .

(via Atrios and kos, respectively)