No column in this space has generated more e-mail reaction in recent months than my questioning why voters would be contemplating a return of Republican control of Congress in November after the eight years of George W. Bush.

With very few exceptions, the e-mails have castigated me, often in derogatory personal terms, for blaming Mr. Bush for the woes taunting President Barack Obama. In the process, I asked readers whether they thought the country with its multiple challenges, many of them inherited from Mr. Bush, would be better off if he were still president.

The column chronicled the most dismal aspects of Mr. Bush's eight years, from his radical invasion of Iraq, a diversion from the necessary war effort in Afghanistan, to his failure to regulate Wall Street excesses that brought about what now is called the Great Recession.

The column also took note that the Bush record enabled Mr. Obama to win the presidency in 2008 by running on a platform of change. But it cited a firm Republican strategy thereafter of obstructionism that made a folly of Mr. Obama's talk of creating a new climate of bipartisanship in Washington.

With the advent of the congressional election season, the president and his strategists have taken up the same basic defense — that the country was left in such a deep hole by Mr. Bush and the Republicans that he has had to focus primarily on getting out of it.

On the summer campaign trail, Mr. Obama has spent much of his time reminding voters of that hole. In a speech in Nevada the other day, he argued that the Republicans "spent a decade driving the economy into a ditch. And now they're asking for the keys back" and should be denied.

Well, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll suggests that the odds are increasing that they will get them back in the November elections. It found that 54 percent of those surveyed now disapprove of the way Mr. Obama is handling the economy, and that 51 percent of registered voters would prefer to have the Republicans in charge of Congress "to act as a check on Obama's policies," as the question was posed.

Yet the same poll offers a slight ray of hope for the Democrats this fall. Responders rated them as a party more trustworthy to handle the economy, by 42 percent to 32 percent. A whopping 72 percent said they had just some or no confidence in the Republicans in Congress making the right decisions, but 68 percent said they felt the same about the Democrats.

The Post/ABC survey randomly polled 1,288 adults, of whom 1,151 were registered voters. That is far beyond the responses in my tiny e-mail bag, but the intensity of the opposition to my blame-Bush premise was notable. Some of it, from the abusive language used, was addressed as much to me as the messenger as to the message.

But Mr. Obama himself, by so forcefully reminding his predominantly supportive speech audiences of his inheritance from Mr. Bush, underscores his awareness that he has not sold the voters on his own promised agenda. His historic achievement of health-care reform remains a questionable plus with them.

It seems increasingly clear from both measures of voter opinion that the longer Mr. Obama is in office, the harder it will be for him to play the blame game, as valid as it may be. The Harry Truman adage that "the buck stops here" at the Oval Office desk remains incontrovertibly true, and Mr. Obama has been sitting behind it for a year and a half now.

To his credit, he has not abandoned his ambitious goals of bringing change to Washington, and the Wall Street financial reform bill approaching enactment is another pointed example of his persistence. On the other hand, his troop surge in pursuit of a favorable outcome in Afghanistan sours many in his own party, undercutting intensity of support in his own ranks.

In the end, the president's prospects for avoiding crippling setbacks in the congressional elections are likely to depend on convincing the voters by November that he is making some progress in dealing with what is on his plate, not in reminding them how it all got there.

Jules Witcover is a syndicated columnist and former longtime writer for The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is juleswitcover@comcast.net.