By Eric Pfeiffer, CQ Staff

While President Bush isn’t coming to the Republican convention at all because of Hurricane Gustav’s threat to the Gulf Coast, he was never going to have a high profile at the GOP get-together and given the sour mood of voters about the direction of the country and his administration’s performance, that is likely to be true when the campaign enters its fall stretch.

The irony of the coming election season is that voters will hear Democrats talking about Bush more than Republicans. Democratic nominee Barack Obama provided a good preview of that in his acceptance speech Thursday night when he said, “The record’s clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.”

With Bush’s approval ratings scraping bottom in the waning months of his presidency, the desire of Republican candidates up and down the ticket to align themselves with the president or have him campaign for them also appears to be at a low. In fact, many will find themselves tagged by Democratic opponents with the same kind of line Obama used about McCain.

Bush has made several campaign stops for House and Senate candidates, but those appearances have largely been kept under the political radar. The president also continues to raise large amounts of campaign cash for his party, especially for presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain . However, Bush and McCain have only held one high-profile public event together: a Rose Garden press conference shortly after McCain effectively secured his party’s nomination.

The arm’s length attitude of some candidates is not due only to Bush’s unpopularity, but the fact that the party as a whole is faring badly in public opinion.

Even before Gustav put the convention proceedings in question, Sens. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon and Susan Collins of Maine decided not to attend the convention. Dole and Stevens in particular are locked in highly competitive races. Former Colorado Rep. Bob Schaffer, who is running for Senate seat, will also not be in attendance.

A number of other Senate Republican incumbents or candidates in competitive races had been undecided about coming, including Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Sen. John E. Sununu , John Kennedy of Louisiana and Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico. Kennedy is challenging Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu .

Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman , who is facing a tough re-election battle against Al Franken recently said in an interview, “If the convention wasn’t in St. Paul, I wouldn’t be at the convention.” Coleman is the former mayor of St. Paul. A survey by Minnesota Public Radio conducted Aug. 7-17 showed Democrat Al Franken moving into a tie with Coleman, which the poll attributed to dissatisfaction and anger with President Bush and the Republicans.

One high-profile example of a Republican distancing himself from President Bush is Oregon’s Smith. Smith recently ran a television ad that highlighted his working relationship in the Senate with Barack Obama . None of Smith’s campaign advertisements have mentioned his affiliation with the Republican Party.

Smith has drastically shifted his voting record over the past year to be more in line with the Democratic majority. But in the early years of the Bush administration, Smith went out of his way to court administration help in his efforts to combat Oregon’s assisted suicide and medical marijuana laws.

CQ’s voting studies showed that Smith voted with the President 94 percent of the time in 2004 and 83 percent of the time in 2006, a figure that plummeted to 56 percent in 2007. Smith registered a similar drop in the amount of times he voted with his party.

Republican strategists and officials have been reluctant to discuss President Bush’s campaign activity on the record. But one House Republican insider, who asked to remain anonymous because of their ongoing ties to party strategy, said the perception that Bush will be absent on the trail this fall is not true.

“The president has already done several events for Republican candidates. At least over a dozen,” the source said. Bush has recently campaigned for challenger Chris Hackett, who is challenging incumbent Christopher Carney in Pennsylvania’s 10th district.