Quote:
Originally posted by seretogis
Bill Maher is funny, but there's no way I would want him to be president. 
As for the polls, wait until after the primaries. I bet that once the Democratic party settles on a candidate, there will be a surge of positive stories on said candidate (*cough*Hillary*cough*), and a large amount of speculative stories about W's handling of 9/11 and the war on Iraq. The media spin will be desperate and immense.
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You're probably more right than you know, but not for the reasons you think. The notion of the "liberal media" has been quite thoroughly and effectively debunked recently, shown up as nothing more than conservatives "working the refs". But even given the media's astounding lack of willingness to challenge the Bush Administration, signs are starting to show that the free ride is over. The media will be pivotal in the 2004 campaign, and if -
IF - the media wakes up and realizes that it has spent the last four and a half years parroting Republican spin points as if they were gospel, then I think it safe to say that there'll be a rapid, immediate, and titanic backlash against the Bush administration. George W. Bush will find himself quite thoroughly "Gored", and even given his prodigious campaign war chest, it's almost impossible to win an election when the news media has decided to pit itself against you. Al Gore knows all about this; after all, he
did win an election in this sort of climate.
Why is this relevant? Because if you look at the way the media coverage has turned over the Iraq buildup, you could say that the scenario I've described is already happening. And that should quite simply terrify any conservative beyond the capacity for rational thought. Conservatives cannot win without a compliant media. If the media decides that Bush is untrustworthy, it's all over.