KENNEBUNKPORT (Reuters) — President George W. Bush often says he’s going to “sprint” to the end of his second term. But if he suffers any more blows like this week’s barrage, he may have to limp across the finish line.With the collapse of his planned immigration overhaul, Republican desertions over his Iraq strategy and congressional probes digging deeper into his administration’s closets, Bush’s woes are piling up fast in his final 19 months in office.

These are the starkest signs yet of the dwindling influence of a president whose public approval ratings have slipped below 30 percent, the lowest of any US leader in decades. “The problem isn’t just that Bush is a lame-duck, it’s that he’s an incredibly unpopular lame-duck,” said Shirley Anne Warshaw, a political scientist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. “And it’s getting too late to make a comeback.”

Adding to the drumbeat of bad news are reminders of a bleak foreign policy landscape: unrelenting violence in Iraq despite a US troop buildup, Hamas’s recent takeover of the Gaza Strip and Iran’s continued nuclear defiance. US-Russia relations have become so strained that Bush took the unusual step of inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to his father’s estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, this weekend to try to ease talk of a new Cold War in the making. Putin clearly senses Bush’s political weakness.

Andrew Kuchins, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggested it might be the first time a US president had hosted a foreign leader at “Dad’s house.”

“Do Vlad and George need some kind of adult supervision?” he asked during an analysts roundtable in Washington. If Bush had hoped to spend time contemplating the remainder of his presidency while awaiting Putin’s arrival, lawmakers have given him plenty to think about. His effort to revamp immigration laws, the centrepiece of his domestic agenda, died in the US Senate on Thursday.

The fate of the bill, possibly Bush’s last chance to get major domestic legislation through the Democratic-led Congress, was further evidence of the difficulties he faces keeping members of his own party in line on critical issues. There was none of the usual swagger when Bush glumly admitted disappointment and signalled he was moving on.

As the 2008 presidential race revs up, Republicans are also growing restive over the Iraq war, which has damaged the administration’s credibility at home and abroad. Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar declared this week that Bush’s strategy was not working and troops should start leaving. Ohio Sen. George Voinovich urged “gradual military disengagement.”

The White House has played down Republican divisions, which raise the prospects of further defections when military commanders issue a much-awaited progress report in September.

Bush has appealed for patience. But increasingly assertive congressional Democrats seem determined to challenge him not only over the unpopular war but with their broad authority to investigate his administration.

Congressional panels have issued subpoenas seeking White House documents as they look into a domestic spying program Bush authorised as part of his anti-terrorism initiatives and into whether partisan politics was behind his administration’s firing of several US prosecutors.

The administration also finds itself increasingly on the defensive over the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay prison, which has stained the US’ reputation internationally. The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear appeals from prisoners over certain legal rights. Analysts say it will be harder for Bush to stay relevant as he is crowded off the calendar by the presidential campaign and attention shifts to his potential successors.

With Bush struggling to salvage his last term, his approval rating has fallen. A Newsweek poll put it at 26 percent this month. The only president in 35 years to score lower was Richard Nixon, who hit 23 percent during the Watergate era.