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It seems that every time the president speaks directly to the nation, his polling numbers go down. Here's Newsweek on Bush's SOTU "bump":

President George W. Bush concluded his annual State of the Union address this week with the words “the State of our Union is strong … our cause in the world is right … and tonight that cause goes on.” Maybe so, but the state of the Bush administration is at its worst yet, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. The president’s approval ratings are at their lowest point in the poll’s history—30 percent—and more than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86 percent), and is shared by a clear majority (59 percent) of independents and even one in five (21 percent) Republicans. Half (49 percent) of all registered voters would rather see a Democrat elected president in 2008, compared to just 28 percent who’d prefer the GOP to remain in the White House.

Public fatigue over the war in the Iraq is not reflected solely in the president’s numbers, however. Congress is criticized by nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans for not being assertive enough in challenging the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. Even a third (31 percent) of rank-and-file Republicans say the previous Congress, controlled by their party, didn’t do enough to challenge the administration on the war.

And yet the Congress is debating how to soften the language of a non-binding resolution expressing its lack of support for the president's policies. I realize that that will most likely only be step one of many, but nevertheless...

And then there is this:

Still, the new poll, which examined the preferences of registered Democrats for their party’s presidential nomination in 2008, shows that Sen. Hillary Clinton, an initial supporter of the war, has a 20-point lead over junior Sen. Barack Obama (55 percent to 35 percent) and a 34-point lead over former Sen. John Edwards (63 percent to 29 percent). Obama has a marginal seven-point lead over Edwards (46 percent to 39 percent). On the other side of the aisle, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain are closely matched at this point among Republicans: the mayor is preferred over the Arizona Senator by a statistically insignificant margin of 48 percent to 44 percent. When each GOP frontrunner is matched up against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, it is no contest. Giuliani beats Romney by 55 points and McCain outpolls him by 50.

If you wan proof that polls about the 2008 are utterly irrelevant, there it is. On the one hand, people want the war over. On the other, they are expressing "support" for Hillary, the most objectively pro-war candidate among the big three. How can this be, you ask? Simple. People aren't yet paying attention to 2008; the here and now, after all, matters much, much more.

And most importantly, there is this:

Overall, 61 percent are unsatisfied with the way things are going in America; just 30 percent are satisfied.

No single bit of polling data should terrify Republicans as much as this one. Those are Carter begat Reagan begat 30-years-of-conservative-dominance numbers. Here comes the realignment!