Political Skullduggery

President Bush goes into the SOTU with his own unique blend of challenges.

All things considered, however, it is remarkable how relatively unscathed "our leader" has been by the plethora of scandals and general lack of policy successes that have come to define his second term.

President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday night marks the opening of a midterm election year eagerly anticipated by Democrats and fraught with worries for Republicans, whose hopes in November may depend in large part on how successfully Bush can turn around his troubled presidency...

He will be standing in the House as a far less formidable politician than when he stood on the same podium a year ago. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Bush with a lower approval rating than any postwar president at the start of his sixth year in office -- with the exception of Richard M. Nixon, who was crippled by Watergate.

Bush's approval rating now stands at 42 percent, down from 46 percent at the beginning of the year, although still three percentage points higher than the low point of his presidency last November.

The poll also shows that the public prefers the direction Democrats in Congress would take the country as opposed to the path set by the president, that Americans trust Democrats over Republicans to address the country's biggest problems and that they strongly favor Democrats over Republicans in their vote for the House.

The political stakes this year are especially high. What happens will affect not only the final years of Bush's presidency, but also will shape what is likely to be an even bigger election for his successor in 2008. Republicans have been on the ascendancy throughout the Bush presidency, but they begin the year not only resigned to some losses in Congress but also fearful that, under a worst-case scenario, an eruption of voter dissatisfaction could cost them control of the House or Senate or both...

But Bush and his team believe they can change the equation. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove put Democrats on notice a week ago when he promised a campaign of sharp contrasts on national security, taxes and the economy, and judicial philosophy. That signaled a rerun of previous Bush campaigns, in which Republicans forced Democrats into a debate on national security and terrorism, polarized the electorate, and used those and other issues to mobilize and turn out rank-and-file Republicans in large numbers...

History appears to favor the Democrats. Midterm elections in the sixth year of a two-term presidency have proved particularly difficult for the party in the White House. Republicans suffered significant losses in the midterm elections of 1958, 1974 and 1986, the sixth year of presidency for Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon and Ronald Reagan, respectively. Democrats took a bath in 1966, the sixth year of the combined administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

But there was a notable anomaly. In 1998, aided by public backlash against Republican calls for impeachment, Democrats gained seats in the House and held even in the Senate in Bill Clinton's sixth year in office...

In the latest poll, Bush received negative marks for his handling of Iraq, the federal budget deficit, ethics in government, prescription drugs for the elderly, the economy, immigration, health care and taxes. Only on terrorism did the poll find that more than 50 percent of Americans approved of his performance.

When (and if) the frightened "more than 50 percent" realize that President Bush has actually made our country much less safe by his psychopathic policies, then the nation may dump the party of fear-mongers and try to regain the trust of the rest of the world.