PROVIDENCE — President Bush makes his first presidential visit to Rhode Island today with a speech on terrorism before a friendly audience of Navy officials and military leaders from around the globe at the Naval War College in Newport.

Rhode Island may be the most anti-Bush state in the nation ; state public opinion surveys have pegged Mr. Bush’s job approval rating in the state in the low-20 percentage range for two years or more. In 2006, Republicans lost the Senate seat held by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, largely due to a fierce Democratic campaign aimed at the Bush administration and its Iraq war policies.

Under a heavy security blanket, Mr. Bush is slated to fly this morning to Quonset State Airport and helicopter across Narragansett Bay to a Newport clotted with the usual flock of summer tourists and big crowds observing Tall Ships 2007. The president will then address the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Naval Command College, which trains promising military officers from foreign countries in military tactics and strategy and schools them in U.S. customs and political culture.

The visit comes just before the president is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir V. Putin at the Bush family summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, site of many confabs of world leaders when Mr. Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, was in the White House.

Rhode Island is one of only two states Mr. Bush has not visited since he became president in 2001 — Vermont, another deep-blue New England liberal bastion, is the other. Neither of Rhode Island’s two Democratic senators — Jack Reed or Sheldon Whitehouse — is expected to attend today’s speech.

Mr. Bush is not scheduled to make any political appearances or campaign-style events, but is reportedly lunching with families of local military veterans who died in Iraq. Governor Carcieri, the lone Republican to hold state or federal office in Rhode Island, will introduce the president at the war college.

“Governor Carcieri is excited that President Bush will finally have an opportunity to visit Rhode Island,” said Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal in a statement.

Carcieri today is also hosting an event for large Republican donors at the Hyatt Regency in Newport, but Mr. Bush will not be dropping by, Neal said.

The president is expected to be greeted by anti-war protesters; several local groups vowed yesterday to picket the visit, demanding immediate withdrawal from the increasingly unpopular war. They are not likely to get close to Mr. Bush, acknowledged Mark Stahl of Providence, a spokesman for a coalition of 10 local peace groups.

The war college is on military property and is a high-security area. State and federal authorities handling the president’s visit have been close-mouthed about security, as is the usual course with presidential visits. While the Secret Service, which protects presidents, bars the media from revealing arrival routes or times, the Federal Aviation Administration yesterday established flight restrictions for a 30-mile radius of the Providence area from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

While Mr. Bush, who lost handily in the state in both his 2000 and 2004 election runs, has not been to Rhode Island since becoming president, both First Lady Laura Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been to the state for Republican Party fundraising events, Cheney in 2003 and Mrs. Bush last year.

As he embarks on his last 18 months in office, Mr. Bush faces a slew of thorny issues, none more challenging than the Iraq war, which has sent his job approval ratings plummeting to depths not seen since Jimmy Carter’s ill-fated administration in the late-1970s.

Major public opinion polls released this month, including those commissioned by NBC and The Wall Street Journal, which put the president’s approval level at 29 percent, the Los Angles Times at 34 percent, Newsweek at 26 percent and CNN at 32 percent, show the toll on Mr. Bush’s popularity.

“Iraq is clearly the explanation for the president’s low job approval ratings,” Charles Jones, a presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin, said in an interview yesterday. “[Voters] either want to see us out of there or they want at least some positive news, and they aren’t getting either.”

It is not unusual for second-term presidents to hit rocky stretches in their final two years, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. “He is poison just about everywhere. It just doesn’t get any worse than this.”

More ominous from a Washington political calculus is the growing skepticism on Iraq from Republican senators who were once Mr. Bush stalwarts. Just this week, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on the president to reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq. “We don’t owe the president our unquestioning agreement,” said Lugar.

And Ohio Republican George Voinovich, another member of the Foreign Relations Committee, also said this week that his patience is running out on Mr. Bush’s Iraq policies.

Mr. Bush can count on a respectful audience today at the war college, where protocol decrees that even top military historians, strategists and officers who disagree with the president’s policies will never disrespect the commander-in-in chief publicly.

Newport’s Naval War College is considered the nation’s preeminent postgraduate military institution. The college is more than a century old and instills future naval leaders with combat readiness and education in security, strategy and military history issues.

The Naval Command College, the institution Mr. Bush celebrates today, was founded in 1956 by Adm. Arleigh Burke, who sought to prevent war by fostering friendships and understanding among military officers from the United States and other countries.

Officers are chosen for the command college by their commanding officers. “They really are an impressive group,” says Marc Genest, who teaches political science at the war college. “They are excellent students, they mix well with American students and they are people who are going to be the future military commanders … or the people running U.N. peacekeeping missions.

“It is really interesting. You have Israelis in the same seminar as Arabs and officers from India, Africa and European countries,” said Genest. “Intellectually it is very gifted group… all type A’s.”

Mr. Bush is expected to leave Newport this afternoon and head directly to Kennebunkport to prepare for talks with Mr. Putin on Sunday and Monday. The Putin meetings come at time when relations between the United States and Russia have reached a post-Cold War nadir.

Putin has threatened to target Russian missiles toward the U.S.’s European allies if Mr. Bush moves ahead with a plan to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and missiles in Poland, two countries that were in the Soviet orbit but are now members of the North American Treaty Organization. The Bush administration asserts that the radar system is designed to thwart threats from Iran, but Putin believes the system is a threat to Russia.

The American and Russian governments have also clashed over the extent of democracy in Russia, with the Bush administration harshly criticizing Putin’s record. And they have differed over Iran, which the Bush administration considers a rogue regime that creates trouble in the Middle East, but which the Russians have ties with.

The last president to speak at the war college was John F. Kennedy in 1961. Kennedy, a Navy veteran of World War II, didn’t have far to travel; when he was president, Kennedy often spent time during the summer at nearby Hammersmith Farm, the childhood home of then-First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

smackay@projo.com