It’s time for a George W. Bush comeback strategy. His public approval rating is at its lowest point ever — while his disapproval rating at its highest, a more telling sign. On top of that, Capitol Hill is in a rebellious mood on several fronts. As a result, the president’s clout meter seems headed toward as low as a second-termer’s can get.

The president can easily turn this around and get his groove back. For starters, though, he has to stop talking so much. There is too much Bush-speak out there. His team seems to think that the way for Bush to maintain momentum is to be on the tube saying something every day. Bush is certainly a trooper, but presidents devalue their currency with too much circulation. That’s what is happening to him now.

As heretical as it is for a journalist to say this, even the president’s suddenly more regular encounters with reporters — he has held monthly news conferences since January — are not helping him. He’s not very good at them. His unscripted and unpunctuated ramblings sound defensive and weak.

“I readily concede there is this attitude in Washington where, we can’t work together,” Bush said, running out of steam at the end of an eight-paragraph answer to a Social Security question during his Rose Garden session with the media on May 31.

Yet this White House relies so heavily on Bush as communicator that it has few other principals to put forward to do the president’s bleeding. Usually that is what Cabinet members do, but with a few exceptions — Condoleezza Rice and Donald H. Rumsfeld, mainly — this Cabinet is about as relevant and useful to this president as a House Democrat. When’s the last time you saw Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on television? Or Labor’s Elaine L. Chao?

Perhaps it is time for Bush to get off the campaign trail, stick around the White House and invite more lawmakers over for some personal arm-twisting. A frequent gripe on Capitol Hill, even from Republicans, is that the president does not do enough of his own backdoor lobbying. Contrast his style with his father’s, who would bring both his friends and enemies up from Capitol Hill for some Oval Office quality time. Aside from Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, it’s not clear that Bush is on a first-name basis with many lawmakers.

There is good news for the president in all this. The Bush-is-down story line has almost run its course. In the roller coaster world of political news coverage, he is poised for an upturn.

Lucky for him, the opposition is too mired in its own distractions — such as Democratic Chairman Howard Dean’s chronic foot-in-mouth disease — to take much advantage of Bush’s soured image. So, far from being a lame duck, the president is simply on the wrong end of a temporary bear market in our politics.

Even some Republicans are thinking about selling their Bush stock in anticipation of his declining value to them. New York’s former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who’s angling for the 2008 presidential nomination, sounded like he was covering his bets on the Iraq War when recently asked if it’s turning out to be a bad idea. “Oh, you never know,” he said on MSNBC. “History proves us sometimes right and sometimes wrong.”

Giuliani went on to say quite adamantly that Bush did the right thing in ousting Saddam Hussein, but his cavalier comment about history’s verdict sure was a far cry from his speech at the 2004 Republican convention, when he entertained no such doubts. Like many in the GOP, Giuliani is now thinking more about his own political future than Bush’s.

So this is probably a good time for Bush to cut his losses. Domestic distractions are draining his power and creating the impression that he is not focused on a solution for the deepening crisis in Iraq. But there is still time to cut a deal on Social Security that allows him the appearance of success even if it does not get all he wants.

One sign that Bush might understand his need to reshuffle the deck came in his answer to a recent question about closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “We’re exploring all alternatives,” he said on the Fox News Channel, broadly hinting that he might be looking for a way to end the voracious debate about guards abusing prisoners.

The most dangerous aspect of Bush’s sideshow-laden second term is how the extraneous issues he pursues give Americans the impression that he has dropped the ball in Iraq. With some fresh ideas, and some new faces at the helm, Bush might regain the public’s faith in his management of the worsening situation there.

Every time the president hits the road to talk about Social Security, it looks like he is living in denial about the bad news from Iraq. If he dumps the divisive domestic agenda and shows some new thinking about Iraq, the president will have his comeback.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.