US President George W. Bush begins his second term with a lower approval rating than other US presidents after their reelection in the past five decades, according to the results of a poll released on Thursday.

Only 50 percent of Americans approve Bush's job performance, the lowest for a re-elected president since 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower began his second term with a approval rating at 73 percent, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower all enjoyed higher approval ratings when they took office for a second term, showed the survey, which was conducted Jan. 5-9 among 1,503 Americans.

The poll found that 43 percent of the respondents disapprove ofBush's job performance, higher than those for Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson and Eisenhower as they began their second term.

Bush is proposing a second-term policy agenda that differs in several key respects from that of the public, according to the survey. Health care, aid for the poor, and the growing budget deficit are important public priorities, while limiting lawsuit awards, making recent tax cuts permanent and tax simplification rank near the bottom of the public's agenda.

While the Bush administration has targeted Social Security as amajor issue in his second term, the public believes the health care system currently is in greater need of repair than Social Security, the tax system or the legal system, all of which are expected to be the subject of administration initiatives.

On the Iraq issue, about half of Americans - 49 percent - thinkthe situation will not change much after the Jan. 30 elections in the country, while 29 percent expect the balloting to lead to greater stability.

Source: Xinhua