Before Bush's surrogates started comparing him to Lincoln, they used to compare him to Truman. The president himself liked the latter comparison, because he could find solace in being an unpoular president in his time, only to be vindicated in the future.
Well, it looks like Bush may even be exceeding Truman in unpopularity, according to this ARG poll. They have him pegged at a 19 percent approval rate, with a whopping 77 percent saying they disapprove (4 percent were undecided). Truman, by contrast, managed to hold a far more respectable 22 percent approval rate, his lowest Gallup polling, while 13 percent were undecided. That poll was taken at roughly the same point in Truman's presidency (February 1952) as the current ARG poll was for Bush, so if he's lucky, he might bounce back up to 33 percent, like Truman in October 1952.
Now, that's what I call a legacy.
--Mori Dinauer
