Chronic: Burka Approval Tanks

Continuing Beating Burka week here at Chronic, let's turn to the mustached soothsayer's prognostications on the president's poll numbers: "SurveyUSA: Bush Approval Soars."

The evidence of this amazing bounce? "One month after posting an approval rating in Texas of just 40%, with 58% disapproval, President Bush rebounded in SurveyUSA's monthly tracking poll to 47% approval, 50% disapproval." Stop the press! To his credit, Burka says that even these numbers are such the anomaly that he thinks they should be tossed, but c'mon – to anyone scurrying through the granite bowels of the Capitol, browsing Burka's RSS feed on their BlackBerry, what's the underlying message here?

Paul Burka, while an entertaining writer, has done nothing to warrant his absurd position as the dean of Texas political reporting. His status and access is, in fact, seemingly nothing but a reward for what he's done over the decades – regurgitate establishment, right-of-center conventional wisdom, under the guise of some noble third-way that's best for Texas. Worse, when his words lead to action, he downplays any role he has in propping up the status quo.

Case in point: BurkaBlog was the one-stop shop for all news, rumor, and speculation during the speaker's race earlier this year. In one post, Burka said an open vote revealing who had voted for and against the all-powerful incumbent was the only fair way to hold the vote – words cited on the floor of the House in the successful run up to just such an election. And to the legislators hanging on his every word during the race, his guess that the incumbent's challengers didn't have the votes may have morphed into self-fulfilling prophecy.

As this latest episode reminds us, it's all too clear who Burka is the Texas answer to: the Washington Post's David Broder. Deigned the "dean" of the Beltway press, Broder may not be read by many, but his relentless flagging of the punditocracy's opinion reflects and influences the stifling consensus that passes for "conventional wisdom" among the Gang of 500. To wit, Broder's latest prediction that, as blogger Glenn Greenwald pointed out,

"'President Bush is poised for a political comeback' all because of some supposedly ingenious rhetoric and strategic tricks Bush employed in his generally ignored Press Conference yesterday. It really never ceases to amaze how out of touch with both American sentiment and basic reality is the Beltway pundit class – as though Americans are going to re-evaluate their fundamental dislike of the President and their contempt for this war because of some clever phrasing and political tactics Bush invoked in his Press Conference."

Greenwald goes on to eviscerate Broder so:

"It may be true that there are relatively few members of the public who listen directly to David Broder, but the shallow tripe he churns out is read – and respected – by most Beltway media elites, whose views are shaped by people like Broder and whose media coverage and mindset is as well."

Replace David Broder with Paul Burka and Beltway with Texas, and you'll see what we mean.