I'm sitting here watching Shields and Brooks on the Lehrer News Hour on PBS. Brooks just said that Bush's poll numbers are up (five points this week, he claimed), and he credited "policy" for that. Of course, neither Lehrer nor Shields asked him what he meant by "policy".
When I saw Bush trekking back and forth to hurricane country over the past couple of weeks, I saw that as the White House grabbing camera time from cable TV news operations. All photo op all the time, is what I thought.
I still think that. The only policy initiatives I have seen have been Republican public relations efforts to keep the spotlight on Bush. Bush has been on camera more, never mind that he hasn't accomplished anything and that the agencies controlled by Republicans have continued shoveling federal money to their friends. But it seems that the mere fact of being on camera has helped.
Will someone who follows polls on a regular basis let us know whether Bush's numbers have improved, and, if so, why they have.