There’s nothing like a $23 million take in one fundraising dinner to ease the minds of Republicans who are growing grumpy about the slipping approval ratings of their once-mighty president.

More than 5,000 donors, including a headline-grabbing porn star, paid $2,500 or more to hear George W. Bush speak on June 14 at the Washington Convention Center. For $25,000 you could get your picture taken with the Republican Party’s star attraction. Even if incumbents on Capitol Hill have to face voters in next year’s midterm election without the aid of a popular president, at least they can be assured that he will provide them with plenty of cash.

The question is, is money going to be enough? As you watch Bush and his allies watch the polls, it’s starting to feel like it might not be.

It seems fitting that an adult filmmaker and one of his stars, Mary Carey, would show up at one of these extravagant affairs, as they did at the most recent GOP dinner. The money grubbing in Washington has become downright pornographic.

But breaking records with mega-money dinners is becoming a Washington staple for both political parties. Bush set the record last year for a one-night haul when he raised $38.5 million at a Republican National Committee gala. That broke the mark set by then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in 2000, when they raised $26.5 million in one Washington dinner. In last week’s event, Bush barely fell short of the Clinton-Gore record, but easily topped the $15 million he raised for Republicans at the first such gala after his 2001 inauguration.

So, no matter what the public thinks of Bush in the congressional elections of 2006, he remains his party’s Fundraiser-in-Chief. So far this year, the president has headlined cash hauls totaling well above $50 million in donations for party lawmakers and organizations.

In the days leading up to last week’s $23 million President’s Dinner, Bush raised $1.5 million in St. Louis to help freshman Sen. Jim Talent prepare for his 2006 re-election bid in Missouri. And his presence at a suburban Philadelphia fundraiser netted $1.5 million for Sen. Rick Santorum, who’s running behind in polls for his re-election campaign next year in Pennsylvania.

This suggests that Republicans planning their midterm campaigns should have no worries about the president’s role as a political ATM machine. But recent polls provide plenty of concern.

Looking at the long history of presidential approval ratings compiled by the Gallup Organization, Bush’s support is as bad off at this stage of his tenure as any two-term president in 50 years. At 47 percent in the latest Gallup — and 42 percent in the current New York Times poll — Bush’s low rating rivals the worst showing of any modern president six months into a second term: Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate-driven 44 percent in June 1973. As the Watergate saga worsened for Nixon his numbers eventually fell further, and a little over a year later he resigned.

Clinton and Ronald Reagan, the most recent two-termers to serve in the White House, each enjoyed 58 percent approval ratings at the end of the first six months of their second terms.

All is not lost for Bush and the GOP if he can stabilize the recent slide and maintain the average 50 percent approval he has posted during the past year. That average is not so shabby by historical standards, and it would keep him from becoming a liability to his party in the midterm election.

Two unknowns in the polling data will dictate what happens to the president’s popularity as his party battles to keep control of Congress next year: the fate of our troops in Iraq and the state of the U.S. economy. Bush aides are on the case. They are signaling to reporters the president plans to focus almost exclusively on Iraq and the economy in coming days and weeks.

But if Bush sticks merely to rhetorical flourishes in this re-doubled effort, he’ll have trouble staunching the bleeding in his poll numbers. As he’s discovered in the Social Security debate, the public does not always buy Bush’s rhetoric just because he’s on the stump selling it. The Iraq situation is frustratingly unpredictable, but at least the president has the power to make changes that make a difference. He is the one giving the orders, after all.

Perhaps there is a lesson for Iraq policy in how Bush dealt with bad economic news in the early stages of his re-election drive. He fired his Treasury secretary and top economic adviser in late 2002 to signal a new direction. That move helped convince the public he was focused on the problem.

Bush needs action, not just words, to win back public faith in his presidency. The money givers may continue to line up for him, but they are not the same as the voters who will decide very soon whether the GOP keeps control of Capitol Hill. As Democrats found out in 1994, things can change quickly no matter how many $23 million dinners the big star headlines.

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.