this article gets it just right. here's a piece:

[Bush] can't understand why his poll numbers are so low despite what he proclaims is a booming economy....Doesn't everyone have a growing stock portfolio? Didn't everybody buy Google stock early? Aren't all taxpayers swimming in cash because of Bush's generous tax cuts?

Well, no....

If you were once an automotive worker making $60,000 a year, your current job at Wal-Mart may keep you out of unemployment lines, but it hardly makes you feel secure. If the textile plant where you once worked shut down -- moving its operations to China -- you may have managed to patch together two part-time jobs to cover your lost income. You're not counted among the unemployed, but you're working longer hours for the same pay....

Neither [bush] nor his economic advisers seem to see those ugly realities beneath the relatively good unemployment numbers. (For that matter, neither do highly paid journalists in the Washington-New York corridor. On political commentary shows, they, too, often express surprise that Americans are not more optimistic about the economy.) The income gap keeps growing, and Bush and his team have lost sight of the have-lesses.