http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/09/opinion/polls/main2074116.shtmlAn overwhelming majority of Americans think House Republican leaders put their own political interests ahead of the safety of congressional pages in their handling of the Mark Foley scandal, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll.
Seventy-nine percent of those polled — including 61 percent of Republicans — say GOP leaders were more concerned with politics than the well-being of the teenage pages.
Sixty-two percent think the Republican leadership was aware of the sexually explicit e-mails sent by former Rep. Foley before the public learned about them in late September — a charge many top Republicans deny. Two-thirds of Americans say GOP leaders did not take the matter seriously enough when they first learned about it.
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A separate CBS News/New York Times poll finds Mr. Bush's overall job approval is down to 34 percent, a drop of three points from last month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/us/politics/10pollcnd.html?hp&ex=1160452800&en=ee2a28bd80e049d0&ei=5094&partner=homepage<snip>
The number of Americans who approve of President Bush’s handling of terrorism dropped from 54 percent to 46 percent over the past two weeks, suggesting that any political lift Mr. Bush gained in the course of an orchestrated set of ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks had evaporated. In addition, the poll shows that Americans are now evenly divided over which party they think can better handle terrorism, the first time that Democrats have matched Republicans on national security, despite a concerted White House effort to seize the advantage on the issue this month.
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About half of respondents said that the House Republican leadership had handled the Foley case improperly, compared with 27 percent who said they approved of how it was handled; 46 percent of respondents said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert should step down. And Americans – including women and suburbanites – are more likely to say that Democrats, and not Republicans, share their moral values.
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The public’s view of Iraq is as dark as it’s been since the war began in 2003: two-thirds said it is going somewhat or very badly, while only 3 percent said the war was going very well. Two-thirds said they disapprove of how President Bush is handling Iraq.
Mr. Bush’s job approval has slipped to 34 percent, one of the lowest levels of his presidency, posing a complication for the White House as it seeks to send him out on the road to rally base voters. Mr. Bush’s job approval rating has even slipped with his base: 75 percent of conservative Republicans approve of the way he has handled his job, compared with 96 percent in November 2004.
Mr. Bush clearly faces constraints as he seeks to address the public concerns about Iraq that have shrouded this midterm election: 83 percent of respondents thought that Mr. Bush was either hiding something or mostly lying when he discussed how the war in Iraq was going.
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