Another bad poll for Bush and another instance of the mainstream media politely declining to put the president's appalling performance in any kind of meaningful perspective. The poll comes courtesy of the New York Times. And so does the context-free reporting.
Here's how the Times spells out the latest about Bush's approval rating:
The poll also found that President Bush had not improved his own or his party's standing through his intense campaign of speeches and events surrounding the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections. Mr. Bush's job approval rating was 37 percent in the poll, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, in August.
That's pretty much all of the Bush analysis, as the Times chose in the article to emphasis the poll results showing widespread dislike for the Republican Congress. So be it.
But notice what's missing from the article and has been missing from virtually every mainstream media report on Bush's poll numbers for the last year--context. The Times provides absolutely no context--not even a passing sentence--to help readers understand the deep significance of Bush pulling a 37 percent job approval rating midway through his sixth year in office. i.e. Is that normal, unusual, newsworthy?
Here's the missing context: Bush is an historically unpopular president and has been since his re-election when Inauguration Day polls in 2005 showed him to be the least popular president ever to be sworn into office. As for Bush's second term, save for Richard Nixon, who who was driven from office for breaking the law, Bush has set the new standard, becoming the most unpopular, second-term president of the last half-century. That's simply a fact based on historic polling data, albeit a glaringly obvious fact the press is too polite to discuss. More broadly, Bush in 2006, with his ratings stuck in the mid-30's for many months at a time, cemented his place as one of the most disliked presidents, one-term or two, in the last 70-plus years. Or since modern day polling was invented.
Fact: Eight years ago to the week, and midway through his sixth year in office, president Clinton was polling 29 points higher then Bush. That's what the mainstream media absolutely refuse to acknowledge. And the Times simply continues that stubborn, look-the-other-way tradition of being afraid of the facts and the consequences of reporting them.