(Cross Posted at Greater Democracy.)

Columbia Journalism Review Daily Traces the Birth of a Narrative. They talk about how cable news reporters and pundits are questioning whether the tide is turning for Bush. They comment, “How are they answering themselves? It's a mixed bag. But if a question gets asked often enough in the media, the answer begins to (almost) not matter. And before long the question mark is dropped entirely and a narrative is born.”

They sum up the discussion with “And there it is, in the blink of an eye, so fast that you might have missed it: A narrative is born.”

I lived on a sailboat for several years and one thing you learn on a boat is that the tide changes four times a day.

Another phrase that people use is if Bush is experiencing a “bounce”. Here, I go back to my experiences on Wall Street. When a market has experienced a sharp decline, similar to how Bush’s approval has declined, everyone looks for any positive uptick. The question that always gets asked is if we are experiencing a market reversal, or if the uptick is merely a “dead cat bounce”.

This goes back to the old saying in investing that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from high enough. When a market experiences a dead cat bounce, there is a brief respite from the downward trend, but the downward trend resumes before you know it.

Is Bush a dead cat? A lame duck? Perhaps the emergence of another narrative gives us a little insight into this. Staying with the Wall Street focus, today’s Wall Street Journal asks, Will 2006 Reprise 1994? This question keeps getting asked and as with the other narrative, ”the answer begins to (almost) not matter”

The narratives feed into another part of the political process, the expectations game. If Bush can claw his way back to only 40% perhaps, Republicans think, maybe they can change the other polls about a plurality of voters thinking we would be better off if Democrats controlled Congress. Of course this 40% is a low expectation compared to Clinton’s 48% approval rating in 1994.

Yet all of this still stays with the horse race narratives. We really need to be talking about narratives around how we will get back to having a government of, by, and for the people.