Soaring fuel prices and slowing job growth are presenting US President George W. Bush with a difficult choice: He can concede there are problems with his economic policies or insist the recovery is progressing -- and risk looking out of touch.
The first president George Bush -- this president's father -- lost re-election in 1992 in part because of a perception by voters that he was isolated from the concerns of average workers. The younger Bush has worked hard to show his engagement, traveling extensively to promote his tax cuts and other economic incentives.
But the recent spate of bad economic news threatens to undermine his message that the economy has "turned the corner" on jobs. Instead of turning a corner "our economy may be taking a U-turn instead,"asserts rival John Kerry.
With polls showing Kerry holding a clear advantage over Bush on the issue of creating new jobs, Democrats announced Monday that party leaders were heading for cities where Bush spoke last week -- in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire and Iowa -- to ask people whether they agreed America has turned a corner.
"If George Bush doesn't drop this new campaign slogan, he's in danger of becoming the new P.T. Barnum of American politics," Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe said in a conference call with reporters.
Bush, meanwhile, is trying to hedge his bets -- insisting that the recovery is on track while his aides weigh a series of possible new economic campaign themes and initiatives for a second term, including tax code simplification.
"The economy is strong and it's getting better," Bush told reporters Monday in the Oval Office. "This campaign is going to be talking about visions, about how to keep the economic recovery going."
Part of Bush's dilemma is that economists are mixed on whether the recent spate of bad economic news is still the "soft patch" Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan identified in June or a harbinger of truly bleaker times ahead.
Recent reports have shown four months in a row of declining job growth, ever higher oil prices and a drop in consumer spending.
"The economy clearly has weakened. It's not clear why, and therefore it is particularly uncertain how the economy is going to perform between now and election day," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "So Bush is taking a risk. But I don't know that he has a choice. The die has been cast."
The stimulative impact of Bush's policies may be wearing off after three years of tax cuts, low inflation and low interest rates. Skittish corporations are curtailing or putting off new hiring and investment. Possible terror attacks, conditions in Iraq and the close presidential race itself are adding to the economic uncertainty.
Even Greenspan's Federal Reserve, which pushed down interest rates to 40-year lows and held them there for months, can no longer help. It appeared poised to raise a key short term rate a quarter of a point yesterday, following a similar hike -- the first in four years -- in June.
"There are no policy tools left for Bush to use. He's taken his best shot," said Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Bush remains on track to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS