Treading Water

Eric Boehlert, at Media Matters, has a long post today on the press's continuing fascination with the non-existent Bush Bounce. Shrub is mired in longest, lowest approval rating miasma of any President ever (it may not be true, but in Presidential Poll report, accuracy is for suckers) and yet. with every poll, some if not all of our Fourth Estaters are trying, desperately, longingly, to show that THIS is indeed the long predicted Bush Bounce.

Is it just the desire not to be proven wrong (looking over the last few years of reportage, has that really been a problem for anyone but HRH Judy Miller?) or what? I don't understand it at all. Bu$hCo treats the press like something to scraped off their shoe and these guys fall all over themselves to fellate the Regal Appendage.

He also discussed Shrub's poll results and their place within historic context; how this is the worst performance by any modern President. And the fact that this is never, ever, under any circumstance mentioned, except to lie that it isn't all that bad in comparison. But it is:

Here then, is some much-needed historical perspective to put Bush's standing in context:

• According to Gallup, on the eve of President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, he was suffering the worst job-approval ratings of his presidency -- 58 percent.
• In 1968, when the war in Vietnam was claiming hundreds of U.S. casualties each week, President Lyndon Johnson was considered so unpopular that he didn't even run for re-election. Johnson's average Gallup approval rating for that year was 43 percent.
• When Reagan's second term was rocked by the Iran-Contra scandal, his ratings plummeted, all the way down to 43 percent.
• This year, according to the Gallup numbers, Bush has averaged an approval rating of 37 percent.

Bush's dismal ratings put him well within range of the country's recent failed presidencies, like the one of his father, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. That's the historical company Bush keeps, although you'd never know that from journalists who refuse to connect the dots and refuse to treat Bush's second term as the failure that a majority of Americans say it is.