US:President Bush is a competitive guy, but this is one contest he would rather lose. With 18 months left in office, he is in the running for most unpopular president in the history of modern polling.
The latest Washington Post- ABC Newssurvey shows that 65 per cent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance, matching his all-time low. In polls conducted by the Post or Gallup going back to 1938, only once has a president exceeded that level of public animosity - and that was Richard Nixon, who hit 66 per cent four days before he resigned.
The president's low public standing has paralleled the disenchantment with the Iraq war, but some analysts say it goes beyond that, reflecting a broader unease with Bush's policies in a variety of areas.
"It isn't just the Iraq war," said Shirley Anne Warshaw, a presidential scholar at Gettysburg College. "It's everything."
Some analysts believe that even many war supporters deserted him because of his plan to open the door to legal status for illegal immigrants.
"You can do an unpopular war or you can do an unpopular immigration policy," said David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. "Not both."
Public disapproval of Bush is not only broad but deep; 52 per cent of Americans "strongly" disapprove of his performance, and 28 per cent describe themselves as "angry".
Neither Jimmy Carter nor Ronald Reagan at their worst moments faced a public as hostile as the one confronting Mr Bush. Lyndon Johnson at the height of the Vietnam War had the disapproval of 52 per cent of the public. Franklin D Roosevelt, Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy and Gerald Ford never saw their disapproval ratings reach 50 per cent.
Harry Truman once tied Mr Bush's current disapproval rating of 65 per cent in February 1952 amid the unpopular Korean War. George H Bush came close before losing his bid for re-election in 1992, with 64 per cent disapproval.
The current president, though, has endured bad numbers longer than Nixon or his father did and longer than anyone other than Truman. His disapproval rating has topped 50 per cent for more than two years. Although Truman hit 65 per cent once, Mr Bush has hit that high three times in the past 14 months.
The president's team takes some solace in the fact that the public holds Congress in low esteem, too. More than half disapproved of Congress generally, and Democrats in particular, in the latest Post-ABC survey, though their ratings were still better than Mr Bush's.