Bush Turns His Attention to Ailing Economy

I am not my father. That, in essence, was President Bush’s message to the Iraqi people as he set out to overthrow Saddam Hussein while vowing to protect those who rose up to help.

Having made good on that pledge, Bush is preparing to deliver a similar message to the American people as he confronts a still-ailing U.S. economy.

When it comes to expanding the job base and fostering economic growth, the president wants voters to know, he also is unlike his father.

After encouraging an Iraqi uprising at the end of the successful Persian Gulf war 12 years ago, the first President Bush stood by as Hussein’s troops violently put down the rebellions. Then Bush squandered unprecedented political capital by letting six months pass before acting to combat a recession.

In contrast, the younger Bush underscored his determination to pivot from the war to the economy by convening a senior staff meeting on the latter issue just hours after a Hussein statue was toppled in downtown Baghdad on April 9.

In coming weeks, Bush and a host of administration officials, including Cabinet members, will travel the country to tout his economic agenda -- and demonstrate his concern about the jobless.

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Strategy Carries Risks

The real question, though, may be whether Bush will have anything to show for his efforts other than perspiration.

Despite his wartime popularity, the president’s economic agenda faces an uncertain future in Congress, given near-solid Democratic opposition and a lukewarm reception from key Republican lawmakers. Even if Bush were to get his way, doubts loom over whether his prescriptions, chiefly a new round of massive tax cuts, would jump-start the economy -- and enhance his reelection chances.

One key question thus is: Will the electorate that fired the father in 1992 reward the son in 2004 simply for trying? And, to what extent will two successful military campaigns -- in Afghanistan and Iraq -- shield the son from voter wrath if the economy remains anemic come election day 2004?

“He’s got lots of excuses in the offing that he can point to, if the economy stays bad through 2004,” said University of Texas presidential scholar Bruce Buchanan.

Among Bush’s assets, Buchanan said, is the ability to sustain a rally-round-the-flag syndrome by “keeping alive some version of the war” on terrorism, akin to his exploitation of homeland security issues against Democrats in the 2002 midterm elections.

But Bush’s abrupt shift in focus from war and national security to the economy invites its own pitfalls, especially if he fails to produce results, said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist.

“If just making the effort were good enough, Jimmy Carter would have been reelected,” Sabato said, recalling Carter’s failed attempts to promote U.S. energy independence and to rescue American hostages in Iran.

“The bottom line is not what a president says, but what the economy does,” said Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University in Washington.

Charlie Cook, a Washington-based analyst and publisher, agreed. “Broadly stated, if the 2004 presidential election is about national security, barring some foreign policy debacle, President Bush will win handily,” he said. “But if the focus is on economic security, that is a very different matter.”

In recent days, Bush has all but conceded that the most he may get of his proposed $725-billion tax cut is $550 billion. But even that amount may be problematic because the Senate has cut the proposal to $350 billion. In doubt is the centerpiece of the president’s “job and growth” package: abolition of taxes on stock dividends.

Also facing an uncertain future are many of the president’s other priorities, including adding coverage for prescription drugs to Medicare.

Much of the resistance to Bush’s top initiatives, all of which carry hefty price tags, stems from concerns over the ballooning federal budget deficit, which has erased the surplus that Bush inherited from Bill Clinton.

A fresh reminder of that came Friday when the Treasury Department reported that Washington ran up a deficit of $252.6 billion in the first six months of the 2003 budget year -- nearly twice the total for the same period a year earlier.

With more shortfalls forecast for this year and next, some economists fear that the deficit could reach $400 billion -- and persist for a decade.

The Bush administration blames the return of deficits on the lingering effects of the 2001 recession, deepened by the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the ensuing costs of combating terrorism at home and abroad. Democrats say a major cause of the red ink was Bush’s first tax cut, with its $1.35-trillion price tag.

In recent days, as he renewed his public emphasis on reviving the economy, the president has focused almost exclusively on his new tax cut initiative as the way to jump-start the economy.

For instance, when asked on April 11 about his domestic priorities, Bush touted the tax cut and mentioned in passing Medicare reform. And in a speech Wednesday in St. Louis, he said “too many of our fellow Americans are looking for work, and that bothers me.” He then offered his cure: “It starts with letting you keep more of your money.”

“Bush seems to feel like if he just pushes ahead with this tax cut plan, that will inoculate him from concerns that he is inattentive to economic problems. There seems to be no other elements to his economic program other than the tax cut,” Cook said.

Sabato warned that Bush’s focus on the economy could be a double-edged sword because he would be highlighting his most vulnerable issue, if the economy remains weak.

“Politicians tend to lose when they are spooked into de-emphasizing their pluses and spending time on their negatives,” he said.

Indeed, a day after Bush expressed his concern about the unemployed, the Labor Department reported that the number of workers filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose the previous week -- by 30,000, to 442,000. That brought to about 2 million the number of people who have lost jobs since Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001.

White House officials dispute the notion that Bush only now is turning to the economy, saying that despite the exigencies of war the president has worked on the problem, often in private.

The coming public push, said spokesman Ari Fleischer, “is a continuation of something that the president began very strongly at the beginning of the year. [He] had, oh, some dozen, 15 meetings already so far this year focused exclusively on the growth package.... Clearly, there was a period of time where the war was the No. 1 issue that was all that people could, at least, visibly see.”

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Public Wants Results

In the end, analysts said, voters will look to the results.

“The public is fervently hoping that the economy will recover faster, now that the war is over,” Cook said. “While oil prices have in fact come down, which will help, the more intrinsic economic problems are far from over, likely resulting in a real disappointment among voters once they realize that the conclusion of the war isn’t going to help the economy too much.”

Lichtman added: “If this economy takes a nose dive, then he’s going to pay a price, regardless of what his rhetoric might be. No president has ever been elected in an election-year recession -- ever.”

But no one should count Bush out, Sabato said.

“He’s won two wars -- easily and with relatively low costs. That puts him in the game even if the economy is still bad in ‘04,” he said. “His father wasn’t even in the game.”