Liberal Media?

Peter Daou of the Dauo Report has two great posts about the Washington Post and NYTimes fawning over Bush.
Wapo:

"In Bush's view, certitude has served him well -- a fidelity to core principles that avoids the sort of equivocation that he believes undermined Bill Clinton's presidency. But as he headed into his sixth year in office, the president was derided in a Newsweek cover story titled "Bush in the Bubble," which characterized him as perhaps "the most isolated president in modern history."

Translation: I can read Bush's mind and he's such a principled man compared to that liar Bill Clinton and look at those liberal Bush-haters at Newsweek accusing him of being in a bubble...

NYTimes:

• "He's strong, and he doesn't waver," said Jaren Olsen, 18, a freshman at Brigham Young, the nation's largest religiously affiliated private university, who is from Albany, N.Y. "I like that he is for the family, that marriage should only be between a man and woman. And the war, we need to finish what we started."

Simple question: what exactly is the purpose of this piece? The subtext seems to be that where people care about faith, character, and principle, they still support Bush. This is a long-standing pro-Bush narrative. The only difference now is that reporters have to be much more subtle in getting their point across. Where a couple of years ago they could drool over Bush openly, now they have to take into account the polls and find more circuitous routes to paint him as a principled, pious visionary.

Click the links to read the posts