THE POLL of 1,025 adults, sampled for opinions between Jan. 19 and 21, showed the president’s approval numbers moving steadily downward over the past seven weeks. The data indicate that Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with important aspects of Bush’s performance in the Oval Office. The president’s overall approval rating slipped to 54 percent, down from December’s 62 percent and a dramatic decline from his January 2002 rating of 82 percent — the highest approval rating of any U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose approval rating reached 84 percent after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
