President Bush’s approval rating fell to a new low in a CNN/Opinion Research poll, conducted March 14-16, with only 31 percent of Americans believing he is doing a good job. Bush’s rating had been at 71 percent at the start of the Iraq war five years ago. “That 40-point drop is almost identical to the drop President Lyndon Johnson faced during the Vietnam War,” said CNN polling director Keating Holland. Sixty-four percent of Republicans think Bush is doing a good job but only 9 percent of Democrats agree.

The poll noted that some of Bush’s predecessors had sunk even lower: his father, George H.W. Bush, who bottomed out at 29 percent in July 1992; Jimmy Carter, who fell to 28 percent in June 1979; Richard Nixon, at 24 percent in July and August of 1974; and Harry Truman, who dipped to 22 percent in 1952.