WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush has had a rough first 100 days of his second term, with his conservative agenda stalled and popularity ratings hit by bruising congressional battles.
A recent Washington Post-ABC television survey gave Bush just a 47 percent approval rating, the worst of his presidency and the lowest in memory for a second-term president.
The biggest complaint was the president's plan for reforming the Social Security pension scheme for the elderly, the centerpiece of Bush's domestic agenda.
The low numbers are particularly sobering as the president has spent most of the past two months criss-crossing America to promote his plan to encourage young workers to invest part of their salary in private investment accounts to prepare for retirement.
But Frank Newport of the Gallup polling organization, said disaffection with the president is broader than disenchantment with social security.
"Overall, right now, Bush is down on anything we put in front of them. It's kind of like the American public is generally more depressed," he said.
Newport also said the White House was focusing on pensions and had lost touch with the general public's immediate concerns.
"The average American sitting out there in the country is still very skittish about jobs, health care costs, gas prices," said Newport.
John Zogby, who heads a polling firm, estimated that even though Bush is still in the early days of his new term, he has fallen victim to the public perception that he cannot be re-elected and so is less effective.
"We're in the lame-duck period. Each day that passes, the duck gets lamer," he said.
In foreign policy, Bush's main preoccupation is still Iraq, where some 130,000 US troops are mired nearly two years after the president announced end of "major combat operations."
Even the success of Iraq's election in January has not helped the US president.
"The window (of opportunity) has passed. If he wasn't able to come off the voting (in Iraq) and turn it into more of a popular mandate, I don't know what he can do," said Zogby.
Far from being poised to withdraw US troops from Iraq, the White House has been confronted with a marked rise in the number of casualties from the insurgency and equally slow progress in its global "war on terror."
The administration released a report this week showing that terrorist activity in the world increased sharply last year, with the number of attacks and dead more than tripling.
The data compiled by the US National Counterterrorism Center, an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, said there were 651 terrorist attacks across the globe last year with 1,907 people killed.
The administration has also been beset by problems surrounding its nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, an administration hawk who is currently under secretary of state for arms control and international security.
Criticism of the avowed UN opponent has mounted since allegations surfaced that he bullied subordinates and misued intelligence.
Democrats say they are baffled because Bolton's style is so much at odds with that of his new boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and in sharp contrast with Bush's second-term efforts to reach out to estranged allies, as seen by his visit to Europe in February.
For all the rough patches, there have also been bright spots in Bush's first 100 days, including some legislative victories.
After years of trying, he succeeded in getting the Senate to pass a bill allowing oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge -- legislation approved as record high energy costs threatened to stall US economic growth.
And Bush's majority Republican party capitalized on rifts among opposition Democrats to pass key, business-friendly legislation, including a bill reforming the process for filing for bankruptcy.
But efforts to name conservative federal judges have caused an all-out war between Republicans and Democrats, threatening to bring all legislative action in Congress to a standstill.

04/28/2005 14:29 GMT