<snip> The polls are brutal. A survey by Gallup last week said 59 per cent of Americans now favoured US withdrawal. Polls by Pew and Zogby International also revealed that a clear majority of Americans believed they were on the wrong track in Iraq. Bush's approval ratings collapsed to 44 per cent in general and a paltry 39 per cent on Iraq. 'Iraq is at the front of Bush's troubles. Things are not going well and the American voting public sees that,' said John Zogby, head of the pollsters Zogby. <snip>
Last Thursday, however, Iraq was far from Bush's mind. He was on the stump in Silver Springs, Maryland, a slice of suburbia not far from Washington. In a nominally public meeting at a local high school, Bush touted his plans to reshape social security, the system of payments many elderly Americans rely on.
For Bush, tackling social security, set up during the 1930s in the Democrat Golden Age of the New Deal, is the centrepiece of his conservative revolution. Bush has devoted huge energy to partly privatising it. His speech on Thursday was his 34th on the issue in a campaign that has seen him visit 27 states. So far it has been to no avail. As hundreds of carefully selected Republicans queued to enter the school, they were outnumbered by 500 protesters. Their drums and shouts drowned out every other noise. That was no surprise. The social security campaign has been a disaster for Bush. The more he has travelled, the more public approval of his handling of the issue has collapsed. A survey for the New York Times put it at just 25 per cent. <snip>
The only genuinely popular piece of legislation likely to land on the President's desk is backing an increase in stem cell research. The move was supported by 50 Republican congressmen in the face of White House opposition. But Bush, with an eye on his Christian conservative base, has vowed to veto the bill. <snip>
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1514898,00.html