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Americans think President George W. Bush does not share the priorities of most of the country on either domestic or foreign issues, a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Thursday showed.
Four months after Bush won a solid re-election over Senator John Kerry, 63 percent of respondents say the president has different priorities on domestic issues than most Americans. Asked to choose among five domestic issues facing the country, respondents rated Social Security third, behind jobs and health care.
On Social Security, 51 percent said permitting individuals to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts, the centerpiece of Bush's plan, was a bad idea. And 45 percent said Bush's private account plan would actually weaken the economic underpinnings of the nation's retirement system.
Also, 58 percent of respondents said the White House did not share the foreign affairs priorities of most Americans.
The poll was the first conducted by The Times and CBS News since Bush's inauguration. In an apparent reflection of the success of the Iraq elections, 53 percent of those surveyed said that efforts to bring order to Iraq were going very or somewhat well, up from 41 percent a month ago. That is the highest rating on that score since the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Bush's approval rating remains unchanged, at 49 percent, from a month ago, suggesting that the disagreement with Bush's ideas has yet to take a toll on America's view of him.
The poll was conducted by telephone with 1,111 adults from Thursday through Monday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
(Xinhua News Agency March 4, 2005)
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