How gloomy Americans are about the direction of the country and President George W. Bush’s leadership depends on how much money they make. Twenty-three percent of all Americans said the country is on the right track, a 15-year low, according to a new Bloomberg poll. Among those with higher incomes, 43 percent said the country is on the right path. Three-fifths of Americans disapproved of the job Bush is doing, compared with 38 percent who approved. Among those with household income higher than $100,000, the gap is smaller, with 53 percent disapproving and 46 percent approving. ‘That’s the history of the world and it’s also the history of the United States,” said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Public opinion ‘is always very directly related to how well you’re doing and how well you think you’re going to do.” The March 3-11 survey followed the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s Feb. 27 fall, its worst in four years, and was conducted during a week when Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was convicted of perjury and a scandal erupted over conditions at the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. […]