As Bush prepares to deliver his State Of The Union speech tomorrow, he finds himself at “the weakest point of his presidency.” A new Washington Post-ABC news poll shows that Bush is “facing deep public dissatisfaction over his Iraq war policies and eroding confidence in his leadership.”

With a major confrontation between Congress and the president brewing over Iraq, Americans overwhelmingly oppose Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to the conflict. By wide margins they prefer that congressional Democrats, who now hold majorities in both chambers, rather than the president, take the lead in setting the direction for the country.

Iraq dominates the national agenda, with 48 percent of Americans calling the war the single most important issue they want Bush and the Congress to deal with this year. No other issue rises out of single digits. The poll also finds that the public trusts congressional Democrats over Bush to deal with the conflict by a margin of 60 percent to 33 percent.

The president will use his speech to try to rally public opinion behind the troop deployment plan, but during the past 10 days he has made no headway in changing public opinion. The Post-ABC poll shows that 65 percent of Americans oppose sending more troop to Iraq; it was 61 percent immediately after the president unveiled the plan on Jan. 10 in a nationally televised address.

The poll notes that this “is the worst these ratings have been in more than a decade,” as Bush prepares to speak to “a nation that is deeply pessimistic, with just 26 percent of Americans say the country is heading in the right direction and 71 percent saying the country is seriously off track.”

Among other key findings of the poll:

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