Blood in the Water

See???

That nutty Ann Coulter does have a point! There is often a fundamental liberal bias to much of the media. W.'s polling numbers are dropping, and it's a game of Pile on POTUS. Every news cycle brings some new 'issue,' most of which aren't really issues.

Look at the thing about the 2.6 million jobs created this year. Reported, I believe, by the Wash Post. The 'story' is that the President said he would create 2.6 million jobs this year, but now, when economic data isn't supporting that, the Administration is 'backing away' from those numbers.

Well... not quite.

The report that envisioned 2.6 million new jobs was the work on the President's Council of Economic Advisors. They're charged with making an annual predictive report. First off, we're talking about economics. Not to dismiss it as tea leave reading, but it's an attempt to take a chaotic system and make assumptions about it. Not unlike predicting the weather. And unless meteorologists are telling you what's happening now, it's a crapshoot. Although I haven't read the report, I doubt very much that the language is anything along the lines of "we'll stake our reputations as economists on our firm belief that everything we have looked at points to the creation of 2.6 million jobs during 2004 at the very least." It's probably more along the lines of, "with factory orders on the upswing and the manufacturing sector becoming increasingly confident in the recovery, it is feasible to conclude that there will be an expansion in hiring, possibly as great as 2.6 million new jobs, based on the following assumptions and data we've reviewed as of this writing..."

So, no. Technically, the President never 'said' "I'm going to create 2.6 million jobs this year." So when he's asked the question, "Well, didn't you say yyou're going to create 2.6 million jobs this year?", he's probably going to try to back away from that.

My point is not to defend the President or--heaven forfend--say, "He's doing a great job!" What I think is interesting is that the news establishment as a whole is pretty much bashing Bush. But before you take too much delight in this, realize that this is an arbitrary thing. They could just as easily be bashing John Kerry. And, if Kerry pulls it out over Edwards on Super Tuesday, they probably will be doing that at some point.

It all depends on whose ox is being gored. As usual.

What do I mean by bashing? Well, if the Washington Post had done a story on that interesting 2.6 million jobs thing, and the President's approval ratings were something like 56%, then that probably would have been the end of it.

But noooooo. Because Bush's approval ratings have dipped below 50%, other news outlets are scouring all the other news outlets for negative stuff, so they can do backgrounders and analyses. ("As reported by the Washington Post... ...and indeed it seems that given the rate of growth in new jobs thus far according to Princeton Economist...")

But, I hope that when the press does start circling Senator Kerry, he'll be as canny about this as the Administration has been in the past. Personally, although I think he has a great resume,I don't find anything particularly inspiring about John Kerry. In a way, he reminds me of George Herbert Walker Bush in the way he's being presented: war hero, smart guy, decent... And GHWB's downfall was 'the vision thing.' I don't see a lot of vision coming from the Senator from Massachusetts.

Anyway.

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