Interesting, if you’re into polls...

Forty-one percent (41%) of Americans approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Fifty-eight percent (58%) disapprove (see comments on comparing Approval Ratings from different polling firms). Those figures include just 20% who Strongly Approve and 41% who Strongly Disapprove.

Rasmussen Reports also conducts a separate survey asking Likely Voters to rate the President’s performance on a different scale. That survey finds 35% who give the President good or excellent marks, 16% who say he is doing a fair job, and 47% who rate the President’s performance as poor.

That’s 51% of voters saying that the President is doing at least a “fair” job as President.  As opposed to 47% who say he’s doing a poor job.  Numbers made even more interesting when you consider that the President got 51% of the vote in 2004.

Not that approval polls really matter at this point in the President’s term in office.  I’ve given up on hoping that public opinion (at least the media’s presentation of public opinion) will shift in favor of the President.  The press just isn’t going to be fair to him on foreign policy as long as we stay in Iraq (and we’ll be there at least until President Bush is out of office), and on domestic policy the President has alienated enough of his base (illegal immigration, campaign finance reform, Medicare prescription drug entitlement, etc.) that he’s just not going to be able to make up a lot of ground.  So from this point on I think the President needs to view opinion polls as inconsequential.  They are what they are, and they aren’t likely to change.

He may as well go on doing the things he campaigned on which got him elected to the White House twice.  That means finishing the mission in Iraq, primarily, and whatever other policies he has on his domestic agenda.  Which should lead me to point out that President Bush was never a staunch conservative on domestic policy, which is probably why he was elected by such a slim margin over Al Gore in 2000.  It wasn’t until his foreign policy came to the forefront that he gained more support from the public.