"You're assuming that you represent the public."

Ah. I should have been paying attention back in August.

...a reporter said to him: Mr. President, is it really true you don't read the press or watch us on television? And he said no. And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.

I followed the link back from Instapundit to PressThink to WNYC. You can too.

It occurs to me (and it seems not to occur to anyone else) that "I don't accept that" doesn't mean that the press never represents the public, words many pundits seem eager to put in the President's mouth. It means that it can't be assumed that they do. It means that each question they ask must be judged on its own merit.

It should be remembered that the White House press corps talks mostly to each other and the White House Press Secretary's office. They're no more experts on what The Public wants than the President is.

(Tangent: The side trip to PressThink also brought me to this tribute to Neil Postman, who died last year.)