[P class=title]Is George W. Bush the worst president in 100 years?
[SPAN class=dek] [P class=dek]He has always been a polarizing figure, but now his constant battles at home and abroad are taking on historic proportions
[/SPAN] [P class=author]STEVE MAICH
[!-- charactor count starts here --][SPAN class=paragraph] On March 16, Iraqi insurgents fired a mortar shell into the U.S. army base in Tikrit, landing near two members of the 101st Airborne Division, reportedly as they stood waiting for a bus. The explosion killed Sgt. Amanda Pinson of St. Louis, Mo., making her the 2,315th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq since the war began three years ago. She was 21.
A few hours later in Washington, the U.S. Senate voted 52-48 to increase the ceiling on the national debt, by $781 billion, to $9 trillion (all figures US$) -- or roughly $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the country -- thus avoiding the first-ever default on U.S. debt. The House of Representatives then approved another $92 billion in federal spending to support the war effort in the Middle East.
That night, Gallup wrapped up its latest opinion poll on Americans' attitudes toward the White House, showing just 37 per cent approve of the President's performance, versus 59 per cent who disapprove -- a drop of five percentage points in a month -- one of the worst scores of any president in the modern era.[/SPAN] [!--new bigbox code start--] [TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width=470 align=center border=0] [TBODY] [TR] [TD align=right][A href="http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/article.jsp?content=20060417_125323_125323#continue"][img height=12 src="http://www.macleans.ca/images/grafix/continue.gif" width=109 border=0][/A][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]
