When last we spoke, the National Review's John Podhoretz was really, really worried about the White House crisis du jour - the Dubai ports deal.

If the White House doesn't handle this well in the next three days, the political consequences could be catastrophic.

Well, what a difference three days make.

Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that now it turns out the Coast Guard had concerns about the ports deal, a disclosure that is no doubt troubling to a president who assured Americans there was no security risk from the deal.

Read the full article and the numbers only get worse for the White House.

Only 32 percent approve of the handling of the Katrina crisis - down 12 points from the low of last September.

Half of Americans now disapprove of the president's handling of the war on terror.

Fully two-thirds think the Iraq War is a disaster.

And despite the fact that Americans are sick of the coverage of the Vice President's shooting incident, Mr. Cheney's approval rating has dropped to a low of 18 percent. 18 percent! Down 5 points from last month.

Any lower and all he'll have left will be his wife, the employees of Halliburton and maybe that guy he shot.

As for the ports deal: like I said, I have mixed emotions. Too many of the arguments I've heard reek of knee-jerk xenophobia.

The best argument I've heard so far is that President Bush angrily defended the deal with the threat of his first veto only a day or two after he first heard of it. And apparently long before he was briefed on the details.

For all we know, he still may not know the details.

It's a metaphor for every other Crisis of the Year of the Week this administration's bumbled its way through since the re-election.

So this is what it takes for conservatives in large numbers to rant that the White House is putting corporate crony interests and political crony interests over national security interests? Why are they waking up to it now? What about no-bid Halliburton contracts? What about tax cuts in lieu of paying for the boots on the ground in Iraq? What about fundraising while New Orleans drowned? What about destroying a CIA agent's entire covert operation for political cover? What about the fact that Karl Rove still works in the White House?

In the end, though, the irony of an angry mob turning on the very president who first incited them against all things Arab is a perfect and beautiful thing.

Well, almost perfect.

Too little, too late, really.

Iraq Death Toll Higher Than First Thought;
Violence Unleashed Last Week Killed More Than 1,300

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.

Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday -- sprawled, blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies had their hands still bound -- and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Any idiot could have told you what would happen if you invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power without a plan to win the peace, Mr. President.

Including your father.

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