Jim Hightower - A Wilting Bush

The bloom is fading on the rose – the rose being the carefully tended image of our boy Bush, whose professional handlers are constantly fertilizing, misting, polishing, and arranging him for public display.

The polls – which the Bushites have been citing as proof that 80 percent of the public is in total lockstep with Glorious George, The Warrior President – have headed south on them. Worse, George's fade is due to the personal factor that matters most for a political figure: Credibility.

– A CBS poll shows that, for the first time, less than half of Americans say that the end results of Bush's war in Iraq have been worth the costs.

– Also, two-and-a half months after Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, wives of our soldiers are openly protesting the continuing presence and almost daily deaths of U.S. troops there, and only 45 percent of Americans now believe that U.S. occupiers are in control of events in Iraq.

– Only 39 percent believe the Bush government was being truthful when it claimed that Saddam Hussein was linked to the al Qaeda terrorists.

– Almost four in ten Americans now believe that the Bushites deliberately misled the people (and our troops) about whether Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Having 40 percent of Americans saying aloud that Bush has lied to them is a big and profound number – and it's growing, as more and more Americans are now beginning to admit their suspicions that their Warrior President is a self-serving fraud.