...
By Anna Rahmanan
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Twenty years ago, Republican President George W. Bush approached the November midterms with an approval rating of 37 percent, a restless electorate and a party increasingly anxious about the political consequences of his presidency.
Today, Donald Trump finds himself in similar territory. With his approval rating hovering in the 30s and Democrats enjoying a substantial advantage in national congressional polling, the president who returned to Washington promising to remake American politics is confronting a distinctly old-fashioned problem: an electorate that may be growing tired of the man it elected.
Bush would discover the consequences on Election Day, when Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress. Will history repeat itself with Trump in seven days?
Read More on Analysis
The irony is difficult to ignore: Trump built much of his political identity around repudiating the Republican establishment that Bush once embodied, only to find himself confronting the very same electoral nightmare.
Yet history has a peculiar sense of humor. And, let's be honest, the American electorate has an even shorter memory.
The Uncomfortable Numbers
In October 2006, a USA Today/Gallup poll placed Bush's approval rating at 37 percent, with 58 percent disapproving of his performance.
A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted October 22 to 26, 2026 puts Trump's approval at 32 percent, with 66 percent disapproving.
Although we're talking about different pollsters, electorates and, of course, political eras, the similarities are there.
The congressional picture is hardly more reassuring for Republicans: the Reuters/Ipsos survey found Democrats leading Republicans 53 to 44 percent among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot. And more revealing still is what Americans believe that they are voting for.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published October 27 found that 44 percent of likely voters described their congressional choice primarily as a vote against Trump. Just 21 percent characterized theirs primarily as a vote in his favor.
This is the peculiar cruelty of midterm elections: a president can spend years persuading Americans to elect him, only to discover that his name has become the most consequential one on a ballot on which it does not even appear. Bush can tell you all about that devastating discovery.
Different Presidents, Familiar Problems
It would be too convenient to treat the comparison as proof that Trump has become the very Republican that he once promised to replace. After all, in hindsight especially, Bush's political troubles were inseparable from the Iraq War, whose mounting casualties and increasingly contested justification had exhausted public patience. His presidency had also been damaged by the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
Trump's vulnerabilities are different.
His political appeal was built partly on the promise that Americans would be wealthier and safer under the auspices of a government willing to discard Washington's established conventions.
Related Story
Abdul El-Sayed’s Antisemitic Ad Controversy Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere
Related Story
Putin’s War on Abortion Meets His War in Ukraine
Related Story
Trump’s Twelve Apostles Are Already Repenting
Yet a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 20 percent of Americans approved of his handling of the cost of living.
Just as Bush's Republicans struggled to defend a war whose promised benefits seemed increasingly elusive, Trump's Republicans must defend an economic record against the stubborn reality of what Americans pay for groceries, housing and other necessities.
For all Trump's insistence that he represents a rupture with the Republican past, he may be discovering that voters judge presidents by rather traditional standards.
The Midterm Reckoning
In November 2006, Republicans lost 30 House seats and six Senate seats, handing Democrats control of both chambers.
The changes altered the political conditions under which Bush would govern for the remainder of his presidency.
Trump's situation is not identical. His second term followed four years out of office, and the country's political coalitions, congressional districts and partisan loyalties have changed considerably since 2006.
But the historical comparison points to something more consequential than the outcome of individual congressional races: the possibility that Americans are simply growing tired of Trump. Tired of the political spectacle, promises and, perhaps most dangerously for Republicans, tired of a party whose identity has become so inseparable from the president's that dissatisfaction with one increasingly means dissatisfaction with the other.
Bush learned that presidential loyalty could become an electoral liability. Trump, who built his career on the proposition that he was nothing like Bush, now faces a similar test: how much of a president's political burden can his party afford to carry?
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines