Bush's Poll Numbers Improve to 47% Approval

The Rasmussen Report has Bush at 47% approval, but the harder-headed Washington Post can thank Howie Kurtz for mentioning deep down in his media blog that GWB's approval numbers are rising:

Some new polling numbers from the WSJ: "President Bush's latest communications offensive on Iraq appears to be yielding small initial dividends, increasing Republican and independent support as the mid-term election campaign enters its homestretch.

"A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Mr. Bush's overall approval rating, as well as his rating on handling Iraq, rose modestly after a series of speeches imploring Americans to remain patient despite repeated setbacks in the war.

"It remains 'a modest uptick' in 'a very difficult national environment' for the president's party in mid-term elections, cautions Republican pollster Bill McInturff. The president's approval rating remains weak at 42%, though improved from 38% in June . . . Democrats maintained a 48%-39% edge on voters' preference of which party should control Capitol Hill."

Am I the only one to notice that when GWB's poll numbers go down, it's on the front page above the fold in the Liberal Great White Snark and the pilot fish that cluster on or about the NYT?

And if it's not bad polling news for Prez Bush, the agitprop MSM goes into its occultation-mode silence, as when Gallup had a poll rise for GWB a couple of days ago. No network TV news, not even FoxTV [now in an almost pitiful pliant "come play in my sandbox mode" with liberal spew-meisters], picked up any spike in the Repub numbers. However, some negativity in the Pew Survey got instant access to Memeorandum.org.

Back about four months ago, I had a blog about how weird this phenomenon has become, citing the New Yorker's concoction of GWB having a 29% approval rating as "bogus spin" or words to that effect. Hilariously, Hendrick Hertzberg picked it up on Technorati or something and fired back an indignant e-mail describing how his "fact checkers" had managed through sophistry and mental contortions to ratchet the approval numbers in the MSM press down from 33% to below 30%. Churchill said it all with "lies, damned lies, and statistics." [Subsequently, I rounded on Hertzberg for allowing his "fact checkers" to let his appellation of a certain family-owned member of the United Nations to slip under the radar as "Saudia Arabia," giving the family-owned airline predominance over the family-owned Kingdom.

My hunch is that as gas prices plummet and America keeps dodging terrorist bullets and the memory of 9/11 is refreshed, the good sense of the American electorate may prevail.

Gas prices being the single biggest "feel-good" variable in US politics, my guess also is that GWB & his minders will avoid any foreign policy chest-thumping that might cause nervous traders at the Merc to put more risk into the oil prices.

Plus maybe Condi can start dating that good-looking Canadian Conservative Foreign Minister and get some feel-good news of another sort generated across the gossip and celebrity tabloid press---by this, I mean the New York Times.