George W. Bush is the most popular US president with voters since John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. He may be the least popular with investors since Gerald Ford in the 1970s.
The 23 percent decline in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index last year is the biggest since 1974, when Ford was battling double-digit inflation. The dollar's 8.5 percent drop is its worst in a dozen years. Unemployment has reached the highest level since 1994. And the National Governors Association says the budget crisis facing 50 states is the worst since World War II.
"If Bush was judged by money issues only, he'd clearly be out on a limb," said Chuck Gabriel, a senior political analyst at Prudential Securities Inc in Washington. "But the American public was traumatized by Sept. 11 and they are applying standards that haven't typically been applied in American politics."
PHOTO: AFP
In the past two years, Bush's approval rating has bested all of his recent predecessors, according to Gallup polls. His average rating of 72 percent is exceeded only by the 78 percent high Kennedy registered in the first three months of 1962, between the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Bush's approval soared after the 2001 terrorist attacks, rising to 86 percent from 51 percent in one week. The rating has declined since, though never below pre-Sept. 11 levels. The surge mirrors his father's ratings, which jumped to 83 percent from 64 percent after the January 1991 air attacks to oust Iraq from Kuwait and peaked at 89 percent as hostilities ended in February.
"I don't think people in the markets hold President Bush responsible for the economy, yet," said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International in New York.
Popularity aside, Bush's actions show he's concerned about his record on the economy, which in the current quarter is growing at little more than 1.5 percent on an annual basis.
On Dec. 6, the president dis-missed Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey.
Investors said then that Bush was trying to avoid the mistakes of his father, George H.W. Bush, who lost the White House in 1992 to Bill Clinton because of a weak economy.
The following week, Bush appointed John Snow, chief executive officer of railroad operator CSX Corp, as treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs Group Inc co-chairman Stephen Friedman as his chief economic adviser.
"As we look to a new year and a new Congress, John Snow will be a key member of my Cabinet," Bush said at a White House ceremony with Snow. "I'll be proposing specific steps to increase the momentum of our economic recovery."
The US economy has weakened since Bush took office.
The unemployment rate has surged in the past two years, from a 30-year low of 3.9 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in November, the highest in eight years.
Corporate accounting scandals, followed by shakeups at the Securities and Exchange Commission, left investors distrustful of Wall Street.
Since Enron Corp's collapse in December 2001, investors have faced almost weekly announcements of accounting irregularities by companies. That led 49 percent of Americans in June to say it was a bad time to buy stocks, according to a Bloomberg News poll.
Bush was criticized by Democrats for his ties to Enron, whose chief executive, Kenneth Lay, gave notice to the White House of its financial straits the month before informing the public the energy trader had inflated earnings. Enron and its employees contributed US$113,800 to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Federal Election Commission Records show, making the company 12th among all corporate donors.
Corporate governance scandals hit the Bush administration again in November with the resignation of Harvey Pitt as SEC chairman after he was criticized for not sharing information with other commission members about the head of a newly created accounting oversight panel.
The shaky economy, the slumping stock market and corporate scandals aren't Bush's fault, said Ethan Harris, chief US economist at Lehman Brothers Inc.
"Some of this can be racked up to bad luck," Harris said.
"He came into office at a time when the stock market and capital gains were collapsing," he said.
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