It's Official: George W. Bush Worst President Ever

He is even worse than Nixon. This poll comes 5 years after the infamous "mission accomplished" speech:

It's one of the most unpopular conflicts in U.S. history and the war in Iraq is fuelling a record spike in President Bush's disapproval rating. It now shows him the most unpopular president in modern American history -- even surpassing Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate. The news comes as the White House confronts an awkward war anniversary.

[...]ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, you know, it is no secret that Iraq War fatigue, essentially, has dragged down President Bush's poll numbers for some time. But today marks a new low.

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QUIJANO (voice-over): With the Iraq War now five years old and U.S. deaths rising, President Bush's standing among the American people has fallen sharply. A new CNN/Opinion Research poll puts the president's disapproval rating at 71 percent -- well surpassing those of President Nixon at 66 percent and President Truman at 67 percent.

The number represents a stark shift from when the president spoke in front of the now infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner. GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

QUIJANO: That White House stagecraft five years ago has come to symbolize the Bush administration's miscalculations in Iraq. War critics today seized on that speech with a protest. And on the campaign trail this...

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You remember when George Bush, five years ago, put up a big sign in front of an aircraft carrier saying "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. I'm sure they thought it was good politics. Except five years later, we're still in this war in Iraq.

Bush has been a gift to the Democrats:

The Pew Research Center did a survey of young people between October of last year March of this year. And what they found was the current generation of younger voters who came of age during the George W. Bush years is giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification. Fifty-eight percent -- it's almost two to one -- 58 percent of voters under the age of 30 surveyed during that period of time identified are leaning toward the Democratic Party, compared with just 33 percent who identified or leaned toward the Republican Party.

In fact, the Democratic Party's current lead in party identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign. It was 11 points then, it's 25 points now.

In fact, the Democrats' advantage among young voters is now so broad-based, that young men are now the only age category in the entire electorate where men are significantly more inclined to identify themselves as Democrats rather than Republicans. And if you're John McCain it's a big problem.

And the killing in Iraq just keeps on relentlessly:

Two suicide bombers attacked a wedding caravan Thursday as it drove through a crowded market district past bystanders cheering the bride and groom, killing at least 35 people and wounding 65 in a town northeast of Baghdad, officials said.

In the capital, a bomb-rigged parked car exploded when a U.S. patrol went by in a crowded area earlier in the day, leaving a U.S. soldier and at least nine Iraqis dead. The attack also wounded 26 Iraqis and two American soldiers.

The terror attacks came amid heightened worries that al-Qaida in Iraq is regrouping despite recent security gains by U.S.-led forces, which find themselves facing intensified fighting with Shiite extremists, particularly in Baghdad's militia stronghold of Sadr City.

In the suicide assault, a woman bomber blew herself up as people were dancing and clapping while members of the passing wedding party played music in Balad Ruz, a predominantly Shiite town 45 miles northeast of Baghdad.

A male bomber attacked minutes later as police and ambulances arrived at the scene, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, head of the Diyala provincial operations center that oversees Balad Ruz.

The two explosions tore through the stalls and stores that lined the area, and al-Rubaie said at least 35 people were killed and 65 suffered wounds, including the bride and groom.

He's failed in everything including with his education "reforms":

A $1 billion-a-year reading program that has been a pillar of the Bush administration's education plan doesn't have much impact on the reading skills of the young students it's supposed to help, a long-awaited federal study shows.

The results, issued Thursday, could serve as a knockout punch for the 6-year-old Reading First program — Congress has already slashed funding 60%. Reading First last year was the subject of a congressional investigation into whether top advisers improperly benefited from contracts for textbooks and testing materials they designed, and whether the advisers kept some textbook publishers from qualifying for funding.

Advocates of Reading First, an integral part of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, have long maintained that its emphasis on phonics, scripted instruction by teachers and regular, detailed analyses of children's skills, would raise reading achievement, especially among the low-income kids it targets. But the new study by the U.S. Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) shows that children in schools receiving Reading First funding had virtually no better reading skills than those in schools that didn't get the funding.