“Things are now clearer than ever: We have the right to feel a chill down the spine. To describe Bush as a madman with a mission at the head of a state bristling with weapons does not really get us any further … and, although insulting, it is no longer even particularly original. And yet this U.S. administration sends a chill down the spine of anyone unwilling to become accustomed to listening to this madness.”

— the German publication Die Tageszeitung, responding to President Bush’s second-term inauguration.  
  
While George W. Bush escaped the controversy and legal wrangling that sullied the presidential election four years ago, his domestic approval rating now only scrapes in at around 50 percent, which is staggeringly low; the previous second-term president to have had such a low approval rating was Dwight Eisenhower in 1957.

Mimi Hanaoka