With less than 19 months remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is perilously close to going from lame duck to political dead duck.

The immigration bill that could be the domestic policy hallmark of his two terms in the Oval Office is stalled in Congress, blocked largely by members of his own party. To resuscitate the bill, Bush took the unusual step of going to Capitol Hill to plead for GOP support – an action that apparently produced few converts.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, nearly all the Republicans vying to succeed Bush in the White House are treating him as political fodder.

The most damning criticism of the GOP party’s titular head came from Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor: “We’ve lost credibility, the way we bungled Katrina, the fact that there was corruption that was unchecked in Washington, and the fact that there was a feeling that there was not a proper handling of the Iraqi war in all of its details, and the indifference to people pouring over our borders.” What has caused so many Republican politicians to turn on Bush? They know the Bush administration is sinking, and they don’t want to go down with the ship.

The president’s job approval rating now hovers around 30 percent. A recent poll of rural Americans found that a plurality of this group, which overwhelmingly backed Bush in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, would vote for a Democratic candidate over a Republican if the presidential election were held now. When Republicans lose the farm vote, an election rout is a real possibility.

Bush appears oblivious – maybe even indifferent – to this looming political disaster. He is locked into a course of action in Iraq that may cause the entire Middle East to go up in flames.

His reluctance to admit error in making Iraq the major battleground in the war on terrorism – and his refusal to acknowledge the country is in the throes of a brutal civil war – has whittled away at his approval rating.

So, too, did his administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush also has been hurt by the pettiness of the people around him who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame and sought to fire a group of federal prosecutors for no good reason.

As a political lame duck, Bush has waning influence in statehouses and the halls of Congress. That’s a natural condition that befalls all Oval Office occupants as they near the end of their presidencies.

But Bush’s stubbornness on Iraq and his obstinance in pushing for passage of an immigration bill that rankles Republicans in Congress and their conservative base threatens to reduce his political status even further.

Sure, he’ll continue to command the executive branch of government until his replacement is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009. And no doubt he’ll keep American forces bogged down in Iraq’s civil war as long as he is their commander in chief.

But as a political force, George W. Bush has made himself ineffective beyond the reaches of his constitutional power.