Bush Jettisons Advisors With an Eye to 2004

Re “Bush Fires His Top Economic Advisors,” Dec. 7: What was once a foregone conclusion has become a reality -- the resignations of Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush’s chief economic advisor. What remains to be done will be up to the voters in election 2004.

Unemployment at its highest since 1994 and a historic budget surplus that turned into a budget-busting deficit in just two years are grim reminders of failed fiscal and economic policy.

Presidential advisors serve at the president’s pleasure and advocate, promote and administer his policies both foreign and domestic. One predominant qualification for advisors is their loyalty to the chief executive. If O’Neill and Lindsey were to remain on board, they would hamper the president’s reelection prospects.

Dan Pellow

Los Angeles

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It was interesting and distressing to learn that the real reason behind the administration’s economic shakeup was the 2004 election and White House officials’ need “to burnish their image as an administration concerned about the economy,” as former senior presidential aide Robert Hormats commented.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a president who addressed the economy because it was the right thing to do for the country, rather than do it just for image-building and reelection?

Marlene Bronson

Santa Monica

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The solution to the economic downturn will not come by replacing the secretary of the Treasury. The solution will not come by decreasing taxes and starting a war with Iraq. On the contrary, this combination will bankrupt all the social programs that are already failing. In fact, all of the president’s solutions are doomed to failure because they are oversimplified solutions that do not take into account the complex nature of domestic and foreign factors.

Samuel French

Rancho Palos Verdes

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The argument of tax-cut advocates that double taxation occurs when the government taxes corporate profits as well as shareholders’ dividends is a phony one (“President Makes Move to Avoid His Father’s Fate,” news analysis, Dec. 7). That is as ridiculous as asserting that when I pay my barber with money that has been taxed, he should not be taxed on any profit he nets from that money.

Joseph M. Ellis

Woodland Hills