Reader Joe C. responds to the last post:

I don’t quite see where this is such a good point because it’s so completely obvious. Of course the press is driving Bush’s poll numbers down just as they drove Clinton’s numbers up. Of course a relentless parade of negativity drives the President’s numbers down, just as a relentless ignoring of Bill Clinton’s scandals and upbeat reporting on the economy kept his number up.
But regardless of why it’s happening, what difference does it make whether or not it’s all driven by the press? Won’t people vote on their perceptions, regardless of how media driven they are? Are Bush’s political problems any less grave because the media are driving them? Will the votes people cast count any less because they are based on media perceptions?
As incredibly biased as the media is, the number one job of Republican strategists needs to be getting around that bias. It seems that when the President goes on the stump he starts to rise in the polls, but then he loses focus, gets tired or whatever and he drops back down again. Republicans need a relentless battle against the media, and the President just doesn’t seem to want to wage it. And to that extent these poll numbers are about Bush, because part of his job as a leader is setting the record straight when it’s distorted.

I agree it’s obvious the press is driving Bush’s numbers down, but liberals will and do dispute this all the time and argue that the president’s poll numbers are down because his policies are unpopular with average Americans, etc. Using the economy as an example, though, you can provide hard numbers to indicate that poll respondents are wrong. And if they’re wrong, chances are they’ve been misinformed.

I also agree that Bush’s team isn’t doing a great job countering all this bad press, but it’s hamstrung by the fact that every week brings a new trumped-up scandal that often comes out of nowhere. Take the Dubai Ports deal: The controversy was ginned up by cynical Democrats, magnified by the hysterical media, and mutated into a catastrophe when timid GOPers in Congress turned against him. In addition, his press office was still dealing with the fallout from the relentlessly hostile White House press corps’ reaction to Cheney’s hunting incident, which is why it was totally blindsided when Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer started making a stink about the ports deal — a deal, I should add, that in an age of global economic interdependence did not previously merit his personal attention. Given all that — and the fact that Bush truly believed that allowing the deal was the correct policy — what should he have done? I haven’t heard a good answer for that.