After sitting above 50% for the last month, the President's approval rating flopped this week on a combination of factors. Gallup's David W. Moore writes up the latest poll for CNN and USA Today:

President George W. Bush's approval rating is now at 45%, according to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted March 21-23. This is the lowest such rating Bush has received since taking office, although it is not significantly different from the 46% approval rating he received in May 2004.

In the last three Gallup surveys, conducted in late February and early March, Bush's job approval rating was 52%. The timing of the seven-point drop suggests that the controversy over the Terri Schiavo case may be a major cause. New polls by ABC and CBS News show large majorities of Americans opposed to the intervention by Congress and the president in the Schiavo case, and Gallup's Tuesday-night poll shows a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Bush has handled the Schiavo situation. Almost all recent polling has shown that Americans approve of the decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube.

But the CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey suggests that the public's increasingly dismal views about the economy, and about the way things are going in general, could also be factors in Bush's lower approval rating.

The last paragraph here is key. While many pundits incorrectly assume that the Terri Schiavo case is the sole source of the President's nose dive, polling indicates that the the low ratings are a result of many different factors. CBS found a 7-point drop in Americans' support for the policy in Iraq, and Pew found that young Americans had significantly cooled to the idea of privatization.

Things can turn around for the President -- he was heading in this direction about a year ago before he managed to turn things around. But without John Kerry to tar and feather in the conservative press, it will be much more difficult for Bush to distract conservatives and Americans as a whole from his abysmal vision and unpopular policies.