“There are similar concerns for Democratic incumbents [now] as there were for Republican incumbents in 2006”

But Obama advisers, who lived and breathed Bush’s second term as Obama ran for president, insist that there are important differences that make the current White House prospects less dire. One senior White House aide said that, yes, neither Obama nor Bush succeeded in winning approval of the first domestic priority they pursued after their reelection. Still, the aide said, Obama made greater strides with immigration in Congress than Bush did on his plan to restructure Social Security.

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The Obama aide also argued that while both presidents contended with unrelenting opposition to their policy priorities, support for Bush on the Iraq War plummeted in 2005 while the polling on the Affordable Care Act has been dismal and divided — but relatively steady.

No one disputes that Bush and Obama are very different presidents confronted by very different circumstances. For Bush, the problems in his second term resulted from a plethora of issues, including his handling of the wars abroad, his controversial plan to privatize Social Security, and his disastrous nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. For the current president, the problems are resulting almost exclusively from the bungled introduction of Obamacare.

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