Economic Record Says That Voters, Especially Women, Should Be Supporting Bush

The ability of George Bush to convey his economic message as successfully to women as to men may be the critical factor in this election. An acute problem for the Bush campaign is that, at present, female voters seem to be less influenced than are males by the strong economy of the last several years.

In past presidential elections, a good economic performance with low inflation and strong growth consistently favored the incumbent party. We are puzzled by Bush’s underdog status in the current polls because we cannot imagine a stronger economic performance going into a presidential campaign. The United States has had almost six years of economic expansion, by a comfortable margin the longest peacetime expansion in the past 50 years. Unemployment has come down to about 5.5%, the lowest level in more than a decade. Inflation is only about 4%, compared to the double-digit levels of 1980 when the Republicans defeated the Democrats on a largely economic platform. And interest rates are about half what they were at that time.

The polls showing that the strong economic performance is not having the usual effect in this campaign also indicate that Bush trails Michael S. Dukakis because of weaker support among female voters. It’s important to ask, therefore, why women are apparently less influenced than men by good economic performance.

The most obvious possibility, that it has not benefited women as much as it has men, is simply contrary to the facts. The economic expansion and government policies of the past eight years have permitted female employment to rise sharply and to result in better jobs for women. During the Carter years, the female unemployment rate averaged about 1.5 percentage points higher than the male rate. By 1987 the rates were equal, and in 1988 the female unemployment rate has actually fallen below the male rate. It’s no longer true that women are last in and first out of work.

Perhaps of even greater significance for many female voters, the earnings gap has been shrinking. Among full-time workers, women’s earnings have been rising 20% faster than men’s during the 1980s.

Women are undoubtedly aware of the important progress on inflation since 1980. Women still do most of the family shopping and so they must know the record here, at least subconsciously. If the double-digit inflation that existed at the start of this decade had continued, prices would be more than 75% higher today than they actually are.

In the 1980 campaign Ronald Reagan made successful use of the question, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Women should be asking that same question of themselves today and comparing their position vis-a-vis their male counterparts with the situation in 1980. Their progress has been real and it has been very significant.

Perhaps the political gender gap has worsened for reasons unrelated to the economy. The conventional wisdom is that women are more concerned with social issues than are men. But social issues are closely related to the performance of the economy. A strong and growing economy allows a society to put more resources into areas like education and health care. Women who rate these issues highest on their agenda should be pushing for more spending on these programs, but they still should opt for the strongest possible economic performance.

It doesn’t seem likely that peace and international security are negative factors for Bush, based not only on the very good record of the last eight years but more importantly on his background and expertise. This is one area where experience counts more than the platitudes that speech writers are so good at reinventing.

Another possible explanation of the political gender gap is that women worry more about the budget deficit than men do. If that is so, let us hope that they examine very carefully the two candidates’ approaches for dealing with that deficit. While Bush has offered a specific plan for balancing the federal budget, Gov. Dukakis has been deliberately vague. Judging by the Dukakis approach to dealing with the current Massachusetts state deficit, for which he must bear full responsibility, a big increase in taxes would be inevitable in a Dukakis presidency.

The irony is that the governor is trying to turn the country’s favorable economic performance of the past seven years to his own advantage. He has stated repeatedly that jobs are what this campaign is all about. If so, the economic record makes it clear that Americans should be voting for George Bush, not Michael Dukakis.