From the new Time article on Bush's bubble:
White House strategists believe they have ended the slide in Bush's approval ratings, which lately have been topping 40% again. "It's time for the Bush comeback story!" one coached TIME for this article. "The perfect storm has receded. We have better news in Iraq, oil prices are down, and Katrina has kind of fallen off the radar screen in terms of public concern."
Ah, there's the other side of the sword. When Bush is doing well in the polls, sycophantic media hacks take direction better than a well-beaten showdog. But when Bush is doing badly, the very same helpful guidance can be repeated verbatim to leave the White House looking craven and desperate. All of which is to say, the media kinda sucks, and while I prefer when they're sucking to the Democrat's favor, it'd be really nice if they just stopped writing stupid articles relying on weird quoting protocols altogether.
The Time article, to be fair, is pretty informative, but it'd be nice if all the insider reporting on the administration's political machinations came with a bit of policy context or historical judgment. As it is, sources get to simply assert things like "Bush plans to fix Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in one grand bargain," but they never have to explain why that's not an obviously impossible task and no one mentions Bush's role in Medicare's sorry fiscal state. It ends up in this weird gray area between manipulative and ignorant and, as you'd expect, leaves readers manipulated ("Bush has big plans!") and uninformed. As journalism, it's fun to read, but it doesn't serve much of a purpose.
