Who is in a bubble?

A few weeks back, Newsweek had a cover piece titled "Bush in the bubble." The line of attack in that article was that the president is too isolated and isn't getting multiple points of view before making decisions. Others have already answered the fallacies of that meme. Today I see two articles which continue the bubble idea but consider other inhabitants. The first article considers the media bubble protecting former president Bill Clinton from tough questions over the inconsistency between his current comments and his actions while in office.

Clinton is the one in the bubble, which protects him from any hard questions from the media about his outrageous claims and conduct.

Shielded by an adoring media that he can always depend on, Clinton is raking in cash faster than he can count it, taking in nearly $10 million in 2003, giving speeches for up to $400,000 a piece. Most recently, he told the U.N.'s climate conference in Montreal, Canada that President Bush is "flat wrong" to reject the Kyoto treaty, which calls on the U.S. to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases to seven percent below 1990 levels. That would be approximately a 30 percent decrease below anticipated emissions by 2012.

In 1997, Clinton and vice president Al Gore, a believer in the earth spirit, were deeply involved in promoting the Kyoto treaty. But the Senate wouldn't even consider ratifying it. They voted 95-0 against its provisions, saying the treaty would "result in serious harm to the economy of the United States."

Clinton's pro-Kyoto comments weren't as bad as Clinton going to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and telling a group of students that the war in Iraq was "a big mistake." That was a major gaffe, ignored by the media, because the Clinton administration had indicted Osama bin Laden in 1998 because, among other things, "Al Qaida reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaida would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq." As he ordered the bombing of Iraq in December of 1998, Clinton insisted that "Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors." Just a couple months before he had signed the Iraq Liberation Act, calling for regime change—he is on shaky ground in condemning this war as a "big mistake."

The second article talks about a group of politicians in a bubble, Democrats in general.

Fond as Democrats are of the view that Mr. Bush lives in a bubble, they miss the point that they live in a bubble. In fact, we all live in bubbles. The question is whether we understand that fact and seek to pop them, for the sake of understanding what's really going on, or whether we just continue to self-select for good news.
If Mr. Bush's bubble is a close and loyal staff, the Democrats' bubble is the media culture to which they look for descriptions of political reality. Their main problem is that they don't understand the way the bubble acts as an echo chamber, repeating their preferred interpretation of what's going on back to them.

The fact that the majority of the media agree with their incorrect world view is taken as confirmation by Dems that everyone agrees with them. In some ways Republicans are helped by the fact that they normally deal with an adversarial press. Dems believing they are among friends tend to let their guard down.