Survey says ...

The Kool Aid is starting to wear off for most Americans:

President George W. Bush's job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 39 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.

Bush's approval rating dipped in the poll below a mid-September ranking of 40 percent. The survey also found only 28 percent of respondents believed the country was headed in the right direction, NBC reported.

The poll also found that strong majorities did not believe that recent charges against former House Republican leader Tom DeLay of Texas or a federal investigation of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, were politically motivated, NBC said.

With the 2006 congressional elections a year away, 48 percent of respondents said they preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 39 percent who said they preferred Republican leadership, NBC said.

The 9-point difference was the largest margin between the parties in the 11 years the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had been tracking the question, NBC said.

It's nice to see that most people now realize the emporer has no clothes, but it's too late: Bush doesn't care. He's not facing another election, so as usual, he will face no personal consequences for the state in which he leaves this great nation. But why should this be any different? He hasn't faced consequences for walking away from his National Guard service, for drunk driving, for his sale of Harken stock just before the stock tanked, or for lying the country into a war.

Instead of being held accountable for his abysmal record, he will retire to (or return to, if you prefer) a life of leisure and tremendous wealth, all the while collecting a pension and enjoying the protection of the Secret Service. It's the rest of us who have to live with the unprecedented (or unpresidented, if you prefer) mess he will leave behind.

The one small consolation in all this is that it will be fun to watch the administration's water carriers -- Fox News, Rush, Ann Coulter et al -- run for cover as people wake up and 2008 gets closer. After all, unlike George Bush, they'll have to make a living after the next election, and the administration they defended for nearly a decade has made sure that's going to be tough for almost everybody.

Lest you think the NBC poll is an abberation, a CBS poll puts Bush's approval rating even lower, at 37 percent.

President Bush's overall job approval rating has reached the lowest ever measured in this poll, and evaluations of his handling of Iraq, the economy and even his signature issue, terrorism, are also at all-time lows.

Ouch.

For comparison, Nixon's approval rating was 24 percent when he resigned over crimes that pale in comparison to lying the nation into war (OK, most crimes pale in comparison to starting a war, so maybe that's not fair).

Do you think he can do it? Can Bush reach the same subterrainian approval rating as the most disgraced president in American history?

Unfortunately, he probably won't sink that far. For his approval rating to keep falling, undecideds would have to become disapprovers, and/or supporters would have to turn against him. And how many undecideds can still be out there when it comes to Bush? He has polarized the nation, and most people have strong opinions about him either way.

As for his supporters turning against him, the only significant support he has left is among his base, and about the only way he would turn them against him would be to have gay sex on the White House lawn (you know how the base feels about gay sex, or at least how they claim to feel about it), although appointing his lawyer to the Supreme Court was a nice try. So he's probably close to bottoming out at this point.

But there's still a way for Bush's approval rating to creep even lower: If Karl is indicted, Bush is going suffer no matter what he does. If Bush defends Rove, he's publicly supporting a man accused of outing a covert CIA operative, after he said that anyone "involved" would be out (which, of course, evolved into anyone who "committed a crime"). That might not piss off the base, but a few straggling undecideds might be bumped off the fence. And if Bush fires Rove, who will orchestrate his presidency? Without Rove leading him by the wrist, who knows what he might do?