NEWS ANALYSIS : Bush Risk Seen in G-7 Officials’ Visit

President Bush has taken a political risk, with the obvious hope of boosting his reelection campaign, by inviting Group of Seven finance ministers to the White House today, a move that injects him into the European monetary crisis.

While the President was not expected to seek a central role in the chaotic European monetary picture, his meeting with the finance ministers--even in the informal reception planned for this afternoon--raises the visibility of the White House and injects it into an international dispute whose outcome is beyond Bush’s control.

Thus, as he struggles with the political fallout of a domestic economy long gone sour, Bush is associating himself with an international economic crisis as well, one that experts say offers no likelihood of an immediate impact on the United States. His heightened role presents political possibilities as well as pitfalls.

“Either this is what presidents should do, and it just happens to fall about 50 days before the election, or he’s desperate and is grabbing at anything, even an international monetary crisis,” said Stephen W. Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.

In the upbeat assessment of White House officials, headlines about uneasiness in the confusing world of international economics, front-page pictures of anxious traders in the commodity markets in London and Paris, and abbreviated reports on television newscasts remind Americans worried about their own economic futures that they are not alone.

That message reinforces Bush campaign attempts to deflect criticism of his Administration’s handling of the economy by arguing that this nation’s difficulties are part of a worldwide recession.

But there is a flip side.

Those same news accounts offer a sense of unease, an almost subliminal reminder that during the past year of Bush’s captaincy, the United States has sailed through rough, unpleasant waters.

And, while international crises may bring a nation to rally around the President, they can also be bobbled, or allowed to embarrass the United States or make it appear weakened.

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, argued that any impact the monetary crisis may have on the United States would illustrate the President’s contention--expressed also by Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton--that the U.S. economy and the global economy are so closely intertwined that they cannot be separated.

As expressed by the President, this argument becomes the raison d’etre for his heavy emphasis over the years on foreign policy.

As the crisis erupted last week, Bush, on the campaign trail, took no publicly visible hand in it; nor did others at the White House.

But, the White House official said, “this is the world economy. He wants to participate and address this issue.”

His meeting with the finance ministers, joined by central bank governors also attending the World Bank/IMF conference, will give him a new opportunity to draw attention to the global connection he has spoken about throughout the campaign year.