81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track

With an approval rating of only 19% George Bush is the least popular president since polling began.

Now, his administration have beaten another record, with a whopping 81% saying that the country is moving in the wrong direction, which is the largest amount ever to say this since the New York Times/CBS News started asking the question in the early 1990's.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

It's an astonishing record of incompetence, nor is this disapproval limited simply to democrats, it literally is disapproval across the political spectrum.

What makes these figures especially interesting is that they come just before an election in which John McCain essentially offers four more years of the same. That strikes me as a suicidal policy. Why would you promise to emulate the least popular president in the history of your country?

When the presidential campaign began last year, the war in Iraq and terrorism easily topped Americans’ list of concerns. Almost 30 percent of people in a December poll said that one of those issues was the country’s most pressing problem. About half as many named the economy or jobs. But the issues have switched places in just a few months’ time. In the latest poll, 17 percent named terrorism or the war, while 37 percent named the economy or the job market.

This does not bode well for McCain. He was hoping, as all Republicans hope, to play on the voters fears. It now appears that they will be concerned with other things when they enter the polling booths in November.

With 81% saying that the US is moving in the wrong direction, one wonders just how much success McCain can expect by essentially saying, "Full steam ahead!"

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Tags: Bush, McCain, economy, Iraq war, US election 2008