Through his presidency, George W. Bush has worked hard to avoid repeating the mistakes of his father. He has done almost everything differently, yet now finds himself in the same hole, despite trumping his dad by winning a second term.

He is roughly at the same place in the polls where the elder Bush was at the low point of his presidency, with only about three of every ten Americans registering approval. Like his father before him, this president faces a rebellion among conservatives, an uncertain economic outlook and the prospect of Republican losses in November.

What were the biggest mistakes of George W. Bush’s presidency? When asked that at an April 2004 news conference, he said he could not think of any. A far more subdued Bush now acknowledges some major ones — and not the ones his father made.

They include “kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people”, Bush said at a news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. He said the inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison was one of the darkest marks on his watch.

“Now I think he wishes he had not taken a blanket view that everything his father did was wrong,” said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas professor who has closely studied the Bush family. “Staying out of Baghdad looks like a brilliant move at this point.” During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the first President Bush did not send US troops into Baghdad to oust President Saddam Hussein after the US-led coalition ousted the Iraqi arm from Kuwait. The current president says the 2003 invasion that drove Saddam from power was right.

A recent poll put Bush’s approval rating at 33 percent. Other polls have put him even lower. Bush the elder sunk to 29 percent in a Gallup poll in early August, 1992 soon after Democrats nominated Bill Clinton.

The differences are most pronounced on Iraq. They also extend to the Bushes’ attitudes on international institutions, government spending and taxes and fealty to conservatives.

“If you didn’t know them, if you came from Mars and became a student of both presidencies, you wouldn’t know they were father and son,” said Republican strategist Ed Rogers, an official in the first Bush White House.

Still, Rogers said, the president “is definitely moving toward his father in terms of having a better sense of history and a better understanding of the US and its place in the world”. His acknowledgement of errors in Iraq “was a long way from the president who couldn’t think of a single mistake,” Rogers said.

As to Mars, that is one on which they agree. Both Bushes proposed an eventual manned mission. They have taken different approaches in other areas:

Iraq: <$>The elder Bush assembled a broad coalition and drove Hussein’s invaders out of Kuwait but did not move into Baghdad. “We crushed their 43 divisions, but we stopped — we didn’t just want to kill, and history will look on that kindly,” he said in a memoir written with Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser.

The younger Bush ignored those words — and Scowcroft’s public admonishments — and invaded Baghdad in March 2003 without broad international support.

Baghdad fell and Saddam was later captured but the war continues. At least 2,460 US troops have died. Iraq is a main reason for Bush’s low approval ratings and it weighs heavily on all Republicans on midterm-election ballots.

Taxes and spending: <$>The elder Bush pledged, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” then agreed to a bipartisan tax increase. It helped shrink the deficit but cost him credibility.

The younger Bush stood firm against tax increases and paid close heed to the economy. He delivered on a series of large tax cuts.

But the US balance sheets tipped from big surplus to big deficit because of those cuts, recession, the terrorist attacks, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and increased homeland-security spending.

Conservatives: They were suspicious of the elder Bush’s New England roots and generally moderate views, and never warmed up to him. He alienated them further by breaking his anti-tax pledges and not embracing their agenda.

George W. Bush courted the right and won their backing through two presidential victories. But many have abandoned him in disputes over immigration, deficit spending, and what some conservatives see as lack of White House assertiveness on social causes such as outlawing abortion and gay marriage. — Associated Press