Bush returns to battle on the home front
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-03-06 17:11

US President George W. Bush, no stranger to a political scrap, must confront serious battles on several home fronts after his landmark trip to Asia.

US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush walk from Marine One to the White House in Washington, DC, following a trip to India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bush, no stranger to a political scrap, must confront serious battles on several home fronts after his landmark trip to Asia. [AFP]

His opinion poll numbers are at a record low and the nuclear accord that he negotiated with India faces stiff Congressional opposition.

The storm over the government reaction to Hurricane Katrina has returned, the Iraq war has worsened for US forces and Congress also stood up to the president over a deal to let a Dubai government-controlled company take over management at six US ports.

In a mid-term election year, the Bush administration is in a sorry state, according to many analysts. His poll numbers are now as low as Richard Nixon's just before he had to resign over the Watergate scandal in 1974.

A recent CBS News poll said only 34 percent of Americans approve of Bush's administration. Two other polls last week put his popularity at 38 and 39 percent.

What worries Republican party chiefs is that even support within the party is ebbing away.

Bush had not even left India before lawmakers started queuing to oppose the president's nuclear deal with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that would lift US restrictions on sharing civilian nuclear technology with India.

The agreement, which places 14 of India's 22 nuclear power reactors under international safeguards, was the highlight of Bush's three-day trip to India.

But critics have zeroed in on what they say is a threat to nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

"With one simple move the president has blown a hole in the nuclear rules that the entire world has been playing by," said Representative Edward Markey (news, bio, voting record), co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation and senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

More seriously, opposition to Dubai Ports World's takeover of British firm P and O, whose assets include operations at six US ports, remains strong despite Bush's support for the deal.

DP World has agreed to a new 45-day review of the deal but opponents say giving a Dubai company control of the operations is a threat to security -- an area Republicans have made a cornerstone of their claim to govern.

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the administration's approval of the deal. Republican Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, has vowed to block the deal, with legislation if necessary.

Opposition Democrats have also threatened blocking legislation, which Bush has said he would veto. He has never had to take such action during his five years as president.

Democrats were due to start broadcasting adverts Monday that highlight the United Arab Emirates' previous links to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Republicans, with some fearing for their seats when mid-term elections are held in November, are starting to distance themselves from the administration.

A Washington Post cartoon showed Bush as a pariah in India -- rejected by passing elephants, the symbol of the Republican Party. In the cartoon Bush was wearing a tunic bearing the word "Iraq," his other key problem.

According to a poll for the Fox News Channel, 81 percent of Americans fear that the conflict in Iraq could spiral into civil war despite the administration's claims that progress is being made.

John Murtha, a Democrat member of the House of Representatives, said Sunday that the president had misled the American public about Iraq for the past two years and that there is already a civil war.

"There's two participants fighting for survival and fighting for supremacy inside that country. And that's my definition of a civil war," he said on CBS television.

Bush's absence also saw the broadcast of a video briefing on the eve of the August 29 Hurricane Katrina in which he was warned of potential devastation and insisted the administration was "completely prepared". The storm killed more than 1,300 and the president has since had to take the blame for the lack of preparedness.