May 25, 2006 11:07AM # United They Fall… By [Justin Logan](https://www.cato.org/people/justin-logan) --- SHARE …at least in popularity, that is. The AP is reporting on the Bush-Blair summit today with the headline “[Besieged Bush, Blair to talk about Iraq](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060525/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq).” The two leaders have seen their popularity plummet as a result of the Iraq war, with the crowning acknowledgement coming from Karl Rove at AEI recently, where Rove remarked on the president’s record low poll numbers by [saying](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/05/15/national/w094108D55.DTL), “People like this president…They’re just sour right now on the war.” Sour indeed. And as my colleagues Chris Preble and Jonathan Clarke point out in press releases and a podcast [here](https://www.cato.org/homepage_item.php?id=274), unless Bush and Blair can conjure a miracle in Iraq, they’re likely going to stay in the cellar, popularity-wise. My other colleague, electoral guru John Samples, argued [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2880) that Bush should have done much better in the ’04 election than he did, and that the culprit was — you guessed it — Iraq. ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [General](https://www.cato.org/general) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).