Liberals love to complain that there’s far too much money in politics and on Sunday’s Meet the Press, the entire panel predictably fretted that political spending could spell the demise of American democracy. NBC’s Luke Russert introduced the segment by lamenting how “there's real concern about the role money is playing in our politics with some even going as far to argue our democracy is being bought and sold.” 

After introducing his political panel on the July 7 edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, host Chuck Todd chose to mock Brent Bozell, Media Research Center President and NewsBusters publisher, after realizing he had three titans of the mainstream media on his program at the same time.

Todd described the panel, consisting of The New York Times’ Carolyn Ryan, Dan Balz of The Washington Post, and Susan Page of USA Today as “really a nightmare scenario for Brent Bozell. This is like the mainstream media all in one place, the Times, the Post, USA Today, NBC. Oh my God! Heads are exploding!” [MP3 audio here; video below]

When President Bush gave his fifth State of the Union address on January 31, 2006, he sat at 43 percent approval in the Gallup tracking poll, in no small part because of public perception regarding his administration's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When President Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union last night, his Gallup approval number was lower a mere 41 percent, doubtless impacted in no small part by the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare and the public's disapproval of the health care overhaul.  What's more, some 53 percent in a recent Quinnipiac poll slammed the administration as incompetent and 47 percent expressed the belief that President Obama doesn't pay attention to what's transpiring on his watch. As to more objective metrics, the job situation is worse at this point in Barack Obama's presidency than it was the same point in George W. Bush's with higher unemployment (6.7 percent to Bush's 4.9 percent) and a woefully low labor force participation rate (62.8 percent to Bush's 66 percent).

Yet when you compare the Washington Post's front-page treatments of Mr. Obama's January 28 speech and Mr. Bush's January 31, 2006 one, it becomes all too apparent that the Post is eager to help the former spin his way to resetting the narrative for the midterm election year while the paper was all too happy to pound out a drumbeat about how President Bush was an abject failure, a lame duck roasting in the waters of public disapproval. Here's how Post staffers David Nakamura and David Fahrenthold opened up their January 29 front-pager "Obama: I won't stand still" (emphasis mine):

The inauguration of unreconstructed liberal Bill de Blasio as New York’s newest mayor excited liberals hoping for a return to pre-Clinton times...and yet there were the Clintons, seeming to endorse the whole thing.

In Thursday’s Washington Post, columnist Melinda Henneberger wrote on page A-2 that the event was “not just a progressive jamboree but a 90-minute pummeling of outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg, who looked glum in the front row of the VIP guests who faced the crowd.” The socialist flag was flying, and Harry Belafonte was on the set list:

 On the front page of Tuesday's paper, the Washington Post trumpeted new poll results showing "major damage to the GOP" in the wake of the government shutdown. However, writers Dan Balz and Scott Clement waited until page A10 to reveal that "congressional Democrats also sustained damage to their image."

Nowhere in the article did Balz and Clement reveal that the Post found only 46 percent approval for Barack Obama among registered voters. (The poll's result can be found on the website.) Fifty one percent now disapprove of the job the President is doing. According to the Post, the President's numbers with all adults (a less reliable statistic) improve to 48 percent approve and 49 percent disapprove, not exactly a vote of confidence. The two journalists dispensed with this stat in one charitable sentence: "Almost half of all Americans approve of the way [Obama] has handled his job, and an almost identical number disapprove."