Economic Policy ‘Extraordinarily Difficult,’ Bush Says

President Bush said Sunday that “the agony of a very slow economy” has made 1991 a year of mixed emotions after victory in the Persian Gulf War and the growth of democracy in Eastern Europe.

“Trying to cope with this economy is extraordinarily difficult,” Bush told C-SPAN, the cable television industry’s public service channel.

But Bush, in an interview taped Friday, cautioned critics not to count him out, despite his recent plunge in the polls.

That decline has just gotten “the competitive juices” flowing, Bush said. “I like the combat.”

Bush, who has already raised millions of dollars for his 1992 reelection campaign, said: “I’ve been underestimated before, and they ought not to underestimate me again because I’m going to take my case out to the American people, get this economy turned around and I’ll be ready.”

The President described 1991 as “a year of mixed emotions. . . . A year of up and down.”

Dramatic changes abroad made this “a more peaceful world for our kids to grow up in,” he said, adding that there was also “the agony of a very slow economy at home that hurt a lot of good people.”

Meanwhile, two Democratic presidential aspirants charged Sunday that Bush has shirked his responsibility and “is making the American people feel like losers.”

Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, interviewed on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” however, said he would not indulge in what he called the “blame game” in his race for the White House.

When asked if he was not blaming the President for the state of the economy, he replied:

“Well, I think the President was in the driver’s seat, and the thing that bothers me about it is the way he’s denigrated the idea of having a vision for the country. He has refused to accept any responsibility.”

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, asked on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” what policy he favored toward the former Soviet republics, said an initial step should be “to build for economic greatness at home.”

“At the end of the Cold War, President Bush is making the American people feel like losers, but we’re not losers,” he said.