"Amiable dunce" is a heck of a lot different than "Hitler," "Baby killer," "Liar," "Village idiot."
I remember those days well, Lakeshark. It was not the same. The leftist media at least attempted to hide its ideology. There were no Keith Olbermanns and Chris Matthews. The NYTimes wasn't 100% anti-American.
It wasn't the same. The viciousness against President Bush was unprecendented and vile.
(The only thing perhaps worse was the treatment of Sarah Palin).
Bottom line - even if President Bush had done more to "defend himself" he couldn't have swayed public opinion against a media that lied about Iraq, that used our military deaths as a bludgeon against the President. Even if he had done what we wanted him to do, I don't think those poll numbers would have budged.
The rhetoric was the same as it is now, it's just that Reagan engaged the public and went over the heads of media rather than leaving the public square to the rhetoric. I'm not a Bush hater at all, but his idea not to engage because of "the new tone" should have been thrown out some time in 2002 when it was obvious it didn't work. No matter what he did, they were going to go to the garbage dump, not responding just left the public undefended from their lies.
As to the media, there was Walter Cronkite, about to be replaced by Dan Rather, and the other anchors were all libs, and there was no Fox yet. It wasn't a lack of bias, there was no Rush Limbaugh to point out the bias, no talk radio. It was hardly civil.
Bush never pushed back, and it was a mistake. McCain followed in his footsteps in 2008, and now that Sarah Palin is no longer in his shadow, she is pushing back, and it's working.
Bottom line - We'll never know cause Bush didn't try, but looking at what Reagan accomplished agsinst the same monsters of the left might show us a better way.