A new ABC News/ Washington Postpoll says President George W. Bush with a 55 per cent job-approval rating - the lowest rating given to a newly elected president since Gen Dwight Eisenhower.
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President Bush
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Mr Bush's approval rating compares to a previous low of 60 per cent for former president Richard Nixon in late February 1969, and a high of 76 per cent for Mr George Bush, Mr Bush's father, shortly after he took office in 1989.
Mr Bill Clinton had an approval rating of 63 per cent in February 1993, the month after he moved into the White House.
The poll of 1,050 adults also showed only lukewarm support for Mr Bush's $1.6 billion tax-cut proposal, with only 22 per cent of Americans giving top priority to a tax cut, ABC News and the Washington Postsaid.
Seventy-seven per cent cited other priorities, including strengthening social security, reducing national debt or spending more on programmes such as education and health care, according to the pollsters.
The poll said if taxes were to be cut 53 per cent of Americans favored a smaller and more targeted approach rather than Mr Bush's across-the-board plan.
The pollsters also asked about the controversy surrounding Mr Clinton's pardon of fugitive billionaire Mr Marc Rich and others, but found no broad public outrage.
Thirty-five per cent called it very important issue while another 30 per cent viewed it as somewhat important. Respondents were fairly evenly split on whether the pardons warranted further congressional hearings or a criminal investigation, with 46 per cent saying it did and 50 per cent saying it did not.
But the pardon issue knocked fizz out of Mr Clinton's retrospective job- approval rating, the poll said. Fifty-nine per cent of those polls approved of Mr Clinton's handling of the White House - down from 65 per cent just before he left office last month.
That 65 per cent rating had been the highest end-of-career rating of any president since the second world war.