The Result of Bush's Most Recent Speech

Via Electric Counterpoint, on which Dan has a nice recap of his personal experience watching the speech, I went to a BBC article on the subject.  The article is chock-full of faint praise, meaning that Bush did not embarrass himself too badly.  What got my attention, though, was this:

On Fox News.com, Liza Porteus noted that "since the White House put Bush on the offensive with four speeches against war critics and others calling for timetables for troop withdrawal, the president has seen a slight uptick in his formerly sagging poll numbers".

What this fails to recognize is this: the way polls work, the President could spend an hour doing an infomercial on the Veg-O-Matic, and see a slight uptick in his approval rating.  

Improved Veg-O-Matic II, 1975 "This is Veg-O-Matic, the world-famous food appliance! . . . the only appliance in the world that slices whole, firm tomatoes in one stroke, with every seed in place. . . . French fries? Make hundreds in one minute! . . . Isn't that amazing?!" The inventor, Samuel J. Popeil, also created the frenzied ads that made his product a late-night-television sensation in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1986 Popeil's family donated this Veg-O-Matic II, along with a recording of a commercial.