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The NYT's Kate Zernike tries to capture the public mood: those who voted for Bush a year ago "for security" feel the war is going badly and has made the country no more secure:
Visiting with Republican family members in the midwest, I can say the mood is equally dismayed. There is literally not a single name that has come up of someone from the GOP they would want to support in 2008. They actively dislike Frist ("he has a tin ear"), don't like McCain ("not loyal to the party"), don't particularly have any feeling at all for Kansas Republican Brownback (I had to ask about Roberts, no one in KC even ever mentions him, ever. And this is in the state he represents). "Don't ask me to name anybody." These are people who would sooner saw off their left arm than vote for Hillary Clinton, or most any Democrat I could name, so I am not sure this is good for the Democrats so much as yet one more sign of the malaise among Republicans too. This surely doesn't help matters for the administration or the GOP....Mr. Panici voted for President Bush in 2004, calling it "a vote for security." "Now that a year has passed, I haven't seen any improvement in Iraq," he said. "I don't feel that the world is a safer place."
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in mid-November found that 37 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush, the lowest approval rating the poll had recorded in his presidency. That was down from 55 percent a year ago and from a high of 90 percent shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
An Associated Press/Ipsos poll earlier in the month found the same 37 percent approval rating and recorded the president's lowest levels regarding integrity and honesty: 42 percent of Americans found him honest, compared with 53 percent at the beginning of this year.
Several of those interviewed said that in the last year they had come to believe that Mr. Bush had not been fully honest about the intelligence that led to the war, which he said showed solid evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
"I think people put their faith in Bush, hoping he would do the right thing," said Stacey Rosen, 38, a stay-at-home mother in Boca Raton, Fla., who said she voted for Mr. Bush but was "totally disappointed" in him now. "Everybody cannot believe that there hasn't been one shred of evidence of W.M.D. I think it goes to show how they tell us what they want to tell us." ...