I don't think it's too unsurprising that both candidates have a lot of bad publicity at the moment... it's targeted negative ad time.
However, it looks like the Kerry campaign is doing a better job of things. The gap between favorable and unfavorable is 2% for Kerry, 7% for Bush. Doesn't say too much for the candidates themselves, just what their campaigns and rallies have been doing.
I'm sure someone in the Bush camp caught hell for numbers like that.