Despite all the hype and the spin, the media may be finally digesting the idea that the "Bush bounce" never really materialized. Hopefully, the story is officially dead. Bill Schneider on CNN earlier today:
COSTELLO: OK, let's show the first set of numbers we have from "Time" magazine. You can see the president's approval rating stands at 35 percent. That's down 2 points from March 29 and 30.Try as they might, the Bush team and the pundits couldn't make Bush even a little bit more popular.
Now, you would think with Zarqawi dead and Iraqi government in place, his surprise visit to Iraq and Karl Rove in the clear, that the president's approval ratings would be up and not sinking.
SCHNEIDER: Well, some polls did show them going up a very little bit, in last few weeks, after those events just mentioned, somewhere in the range of 37 to 41 percent. But this is the most recent poll. The only one taken since the Supreme Court's Guantanamo decision, which went against the White House and it shows the president with a low number indeed, 35 percent. So any improvement was very short lived.
