When thoughtful people talk about media bias, they aren’t talking about a conspiratorial cabal of insider types who plot to distort the news. They’re talking about bias in the true sense of that word, habits of mind that produce sympathy with certain points of view. A pretty good example of that can be found in this morning’s New York Times, in which Elizabeth Bumiller invests 1,584 words in repeating the main Democratic talking-point against McCain, the patently absurd idea that his election would represent a “third term” for the Bush administration. From the headline (How Close McCain Is to Bush Depends on the Issue) on, it’s an exploration of Democratic criticisms from a Democrat’s point of view.

The piece begins with the oldest and most tired rhetorical dodge in the reporter’s vocabulary: “Some critics say.”

WASHINGTON — The Democrats like to say that electing Senator John McCain would usher in the third term of George W. Bush, and they do not mean it as a compliment. The Republicans counter that calling the senator “McBush” is political spin and that Mr. McCain is his own man.

Those Democrats who “like to say” that McCain is the Second Coming of Bush presumably include the Democrats who make the major editorial decisions at the Times, and it’s a safe bet that they will reiterate precisely this same “McCain = Bush” argument from now until Election Day.

The logical problem with Bumiller’s argument is that she does not seem to quite appreciate that McCain’s career in Washington far precedes the Bush administration, or even the appearance of G.W. Bush on the political scene in Texas, much less on the national level. Both men belong to the same party and share, in very broad terms, a moderately conservative philosophy, but there is a significant difference between consonance of views and conformity of views. The very fact that, as the headline puts it, “How close McCain is to Bush depends on the issue,” suggests a certain independence of mind, does it not? After all, one might as easily write “How close Ted Kennedy is to Bush depends on the issue.”

Nonetheless, Bumiller has clearly taken to heart the “McCain = Bush” trope and explores it from every angle consistent with Democratic preferences and narrative template. But she cannot step outside that tight little circle and contemplate other possibilities, like the most obvious one: that this rhetoric is a cheap campaign ploy cleaved to by Democrats who would rather be running against the unpopular and polarizing Bush than against the liked and likable McCain.

What Bumiller really misses is the political genius of John McCain. Rather than flit about from position to position in a desperate bid for popularity (cf. Clinton, Wm Jefferson) McCain burnished his reputation by courting popularity precisely by not flitting from position to position, by picking fights and emphasizing his differences with conservatives, the Religious Right, Donald Rumsfeld, &c. That, too, has no doubt been a desperate bid for popularity (that’s what politicians do) but one that has allowed him to keep some dignity. Opinions on abortion, for instance, have waxed and waned, but McCain can point to a pretty consistent record. Opinions on the Iraq War have been all over the place, but McCain can point to a pretty consistent record of opposing the Bush administration when he believed them to be in the wrong and supporting them when he believed them to be in the right. (Ergo, “How close McCain is to Bush depends on the issue.”) Barack Obama, who has consistently voted to support war funding and other war measures that President Bush has requested, is in the paradoxical position of having supported the administration (with his Senate votes) when he believed them to be in the wrong while criticizing them on those subjects on which there is evidence that they are in the right, i.e. the Surge.

But don’t expect to see that angle explored by Bumiller or anybody else in the Times, which inhabits a fairly narrow intellectual universe, circumscribed by a sense of social affiliation of which Democratic partisanship is a small but significant part.