In another sign that Republicans might have trouble holding onto Congress in November, a poll commissioned by the Center for Rural Strategies found a majority of voters who live in rural areas believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. That might be bad news for all the president's men, who have gained enough small-town votes in the recent past to overtake Democratic strongholds in the more populous cities.

But small-town voters still like Dubya a bit more than the rest of the country — 47 percent of them approve of the bang-up (or not) job he is doing, as opposed to the 44 percent of the rest of the land.