Despite the obvious signs it exists -- and has for nearly 20 months -- the pervasive buyer's remorse that hovers around President Bush's second term, as measured by public opinion polls, remains off limits for the press. The topic is all but banned from polite discussion among elite Beltway press players who seem to be deeply invested in the success of the Bush administration.
The issue of buyer's remorse is directly connected to a larger, twofold problem surrounding the ongoing coverage of Bush's polling numbers. First, there's developed a pervasive press obsession with trying to be the first to document Bush's rebound in the polls. (It stands in stark contrast to the press conduct during President Clinton's second term when reporters and pundits were forever hunting, unsuccessfully, for evidence that Clinton's popularity was slipping.)
Secondly, and just as disturbing, is the categorical refusal by the press to put Bush's consistently dreadful poll numbers into any kind of historical context. The fact that Bush has been bogged down for much of this year with poll numbers in the 30's is nothing short of astonishing. In the last half-century, the only other comparable second-term collapse belonged to Richard Nixon, whose fall, of course, was fueled by the revelation that a criminal enterprise had been operating from inside the Oval Office. Yet Bush's second-term performance is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Nixon's.
Quite the contrary, despite historic dissatisfaction with Bush, the press continues to depict him as the central, charging force in American politics, while setting aside all sorts of time and energy trying to document Bush's (we're told) inevitable rebound.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200609190002
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