Disfavor for Bush Hits Rare Heights - washingtonpost.com That may stem in part from the changing nature of society. When Caddell's boss was president, there were three major broadcast networks. Today cable news, talk radio and the Internet have made information far more available, while providing easy outlets for rage and polarization. Public disapproval of Bush is not only broad but deep; 52 percent of Americans "strongly" disapprove of his performance and 28 percent describe themselves as "angry."

“A lot of the commentary that comes out of the Internet world is very harsh,” said Frank J. Donatelli, White House political director for Ronald Reagan. “That has a tendency to reinforce people’s opinions and harden people’s opinions.”

This sounds like a plausible explanation of the difference between Bush and Carter or Bush and Truman. But it makes a lot less sense when confronted with the following description of Truman’s reelection. If the above story were accurate, then Truman wouldn’t have stood a chance without some sort of an internet.

Wikipedia's entry on Truman: There followed a remarkable 21,928-mile^[69] presidential odyssey, an unprecedented personal appeal to the nation. Truman and his staff crisscrossed the United States in the presidential train; his "whistlestop" tactic of giving brief speeches from the rear platform of the observation car Ferdinand Magellan became iconic of the entire campaign.^[70] His combative appearances, such as those at the town square of Harrisburg, Illinois, captured the popular imagination and drew huge crowds. (Six stops in Michigan drew a combined total of half a million people;^[71] a full million turned out for a New York City appearance.^[72]).

The massive, mostly spontaneous gatherings at Truman’s depot events were an important sign of a critical change in momentum in the campaign — but this shift went virtually unnoticed by the national press corps, which simply continued reporting Republican Thomas Dewey’s (supposedly) impending victory as a certainty. One reason for the press’s inaccurate projection was polls conducted primarily by telephone during a time when many people, including much of Truman’s populist base, did not own a telephone.^[73] This skewed the data to indicate a stronger support base for Dewey than existed, which contributed to the media’s perception of Truman’s bleak chances.

Yet, how come Howard Dean and George McGovern lost? Quite obviously the processes of opinion formation and decision making are more complex.

So what we’re dealing with here is some sort of public sense making through idealized narrative (or schematic scenarios) that I would be willing to include under the umbrella of frame negotiation.