Bush Measures Words in Economic Dilemma

Mindful of the havoc a soured economy can play with a political career, President Bush is walking a fine line between speaking out on the economy and appearing to be dominated by it.

Some days, he adopts the “not-on-my-watch” approach, as in, “this economic problem was here before I got here.” On Friday, when the government reported unemployment jumped to 4.9% from 4.5%, he rushed out to express his concern.

On Monday, he just ignored it.

With his father’s loss of the White House in 1992 hanging over the White House of George W. Bush, the president seeks to project the aura of a chief executive fully aware of the nation’s economic anxieties and sympathetic to those most at risk.

But as some at the White House see it, the president has already given economic relief in the form of the largest tax cut in two decades.

So, for the time being, he is trying to demonstrate concern, while emphasizing with greater frequency that the slowdown began a year ago. He is waiting to see what effect the tax cut has, and, aides say, keeping an open mind to any suggestions--and he is getting plenty from Republican allies, and others, privately and publicly.

There were these on Monday from Pat Buchanan: Drop the capital-gains tax for six months to spur investment and immediately spend $75 billion on the Pentagon’s shopping list, promoting economic growth by fueling the manufacturing sector.

Buchanan, whose challenge to the former President Bush in the 1992 election is widely credited, along with the recession that year, with bringing Republican defeat, is convinced that by next year the economy will be “deeper in the tank.” So, if his suggestions aren’t taken or don’t work, he offered one more for insurance: Try a Roman Catholic regimen of nine days of prayer.

For now, the White House is more likely to look kindly on a mix-and-match idea percolating on Capitol Hill. It would meld a Republican-favored cut in the capital-gains tax and an idea gaining some Democratic support--cutting the Social Security payroll tax. The latter would let those earning so little that they pay no income taxes benefit from tax reductions.

The closest Bush came to addressing the economy on Monday was when he was asked before a meeting at the White House with the prime minister of Australia what he thought of more tax cuts. He immediately steered away from the topic.

“I’m honored the prime minister is here. He’s a great friend,” Bush told reporters.

For Bush, having decided for now to just give the $1.35-trillion tax cut time to have an effect, there is only so much to be said.

“Coming out and saying ‘I’m really worried about the economy’--you can’t say that over and over, until he has something new to announce,” said one advisor.

But one Bush loyalist who was deeply involved in the former President Bush’s reelection campaign recalled the dilemma faced a decade ago.

“In ‘91, we were off doing foreign policy. We would lay out no picture [for economic recovery] and talk of a normal business cycle, and we got killed,” he said. But, he added, “you don’t want to go to the other extreme and make it more damaging [by] talking about it all the time so you make it the one and only news story every day.”

With proposals swirling down from the Congress and into the White House from across the country, one Bush aide in Washington said, “We’re kind of in a holding pattern right now.”

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer brushed aside the suggestion that speaking too much about the economy might put Bush in political peril. He said two issues, the economy and education, are of top concern, and the president is speaking about one of them this week--education.

“This too is a top national priority, and the president will not let it go unaddressed,” said Fleischer, traveling with Bush to a Jacksonville, Fla., school Monday. “The focus today is on reading, on education.”

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Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Chen from Jacksonville, Fla.