The Making of George Bush, Macho Man

With six months until the election, it's anyone's guess who will win in November. Polls suggest widespread ambivalence about the president's leadership, but also point to continuing doubts about John Kerry's character.

The American people may not yet have made up their minds about their leaders, but the media certainly have. Whatever its outcome, Election 2004 has already been cast as the battle between the strong but stubborn George Bush and the nuanced but flip-flopping John Kerry.

The storyline was already in play the morning after Bush's primetime press conference in early April. David Sanger of the New York Times set out the emerging characterization in his analysis: "Bush drove home the single-mindedness that has become the hallmark of his presidency, his greatest strength in the eyes of his admirers and a dangerous, never-change-course stubbornness in the eyes of his detractors."

Richard Wolffe, writing a "Web Exclusive" for Newsweek posted the same day, picked up the ball and ran with it:

At his press conference on Tuesday evening, George W. Bush was strong, confident and aggressive -- and weak, hesitant and defensive. He was humble, he was arrogant. He showed his fine political antenna and his tin political ear. He was eloquent, and he was tongue-tied. You can see why people love or hate him. It's not just because of his policies. It's because he embodies those black-and-white contrasts himself.

And finally, the "Dean" of the Washington press corps, David Broder (hey, we're talking about conventional wisdom, after all) wrote in an Apr. 15 Washington Post opinion column, "Combined with [Bush's] assertiveness in proclaiming that he will not be deflected from his chosen course by criticism or evidence of public doubts about the wisdom of his policies, this idealism forms an image of resolute leadership."

As we all know, in journalism, three makes a trend. To be sure, this developing characterization of Bush as strong-willed contains more than a kernel of truth. That's in part why everyone is pointing it out.

But there's another reason why the press corps have seized on this narrative. To begin with, it serves to reinforce the press's ostensible "objectivity" at a time when it's being aggressively challenged by both the left and the right. It's a ready-made storyline, with both pro-Bush and anti-Bush strands already built into it. It allows Bush to be both a strong leader and as dangerously stubborn at the same time. For reporters terrified of being accused of partisanship, this double-edged characterization is a valuable commodity.

And it has the added advantage of allowing the media to draw a clear contrast between the two presidential candidates. Pitched against the assertive Bush is John Kerry, a man whose who favors more "nuanced" (or wishy-washy) views on everything from the Iraq invasion to gay marriage.

The problem with this handy framing device is that reporters are so devoted to the "strong-but-stubborn" thesis, that they are willing to ignore any evidence that runs counter to it. Neither Sanger, nor Wolffe, nor Broder, for example, mentioned any of Bush's various well-documented reversals -- be it on the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, steel tariffs, or allowing Condoleezza Rice testify before the 9/11 Commission. Whether you see those decisions as weak and unprincipled flip-flopping or flexible decision-making, they sure don't fit the "strong-but-stubborn" Bush.

The need to stick to the storyline at all costs can cause reporters to make claims that stretch the bounds of credibility. Check out Wolffe of Newsweek following his own logic into an absurd cul-de-sac:

Such contrasts help explain why there are so few don't-knows about the president. In the latest Newsweek poll, just 6 percent said they didn't know if they approved or disapproved of [Bush's] performance as president. In the days before 9/11 that number was 15 percent. John Kerry's don't-knows are 12 percent.

So Bush's "don't-know" figure is lower than that of Kerry. Could it be because Bush has been President of the United States for over three years, while Kerry is still largely unknown to much of the electorate? If anything, the 6-point difference seems smaller than one would expect in a battle against an incumbent.