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Bush takes credit economic upturn { September 1 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Bush claims credit for economic upturn
By James Harding
Published: September 1 2003 19:43 | Last Updated: September 1 2003 19:43
President George W. Bush is, in many ways, cut from a different cloth to his father. Whereas President George H.W Bush was an assiduous internationalist, the current president has put his faith in American power and `a la carte coalitions. The father is a New Englander, the son a self-styled Texan; the elder Mr Bush was a Republican from the moderate camp, his son has embraced the party's conservative base.
When it comes to re-election, the odds are that Mr Bush will again prove to be his father's opposite.
The 41st president led the US to a swift and relatively bloodless victory in the Gulf in 1991 but recession and his perceived indifference to economic hardship cost him a second term in 1992. By contrast, the 43rd president's foreign policy may yet prove to be a liability with American voters but the economy could come to his rescue.
The signals of an upturn in the US economy are already feeding into Mr Bush's campaign platform. On Monday he flew to Ohio to deliver a Labor Day speech on the economy, offering no new policies but what is essentially a fresh message: he claimed credit for the nascent recovery.
"We acted to come out of that recession. . . We acted with tax relief," he told a group from the International Union of Operation Engineers, which represents US and Canadian construction and maintenance workers. While noting problems in the manufacturing sector and noting the need for more jobs, he said: "It was a shallow recession because of tax relief."
Speaking in the drizzle to a modest crowd, Mr Bush listed economic output "rising faster than expected", consumer spending "also on the rise" and companies "seeing more orders" and concluded: "The economy is beginning to grow. . . There are better days ahead."
Following Mr Bush's upbeat assessment yesterday in Ohio, a swing state in next year's presidential election, he will visit Missouri and Indiana this week to deliver a similar message of economic optimism.
The presidential radio address over the Labor Day weekend also pointed to positive economic indicators: low interest rates, rising consumer spending and new factory orders.
Last year Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief political strategist, advised Republican candidates and party workers to focus on the war on terrorism, seeking to exploit Mr Bush's perceived advantage over Democrats on issues of national security.
But Mr Bush's foreign policy has in recent weeks begun to look like a less reliable political asset. Opinion polls show growing anxiety that the US is not in control in Iraq. Hope has flagged over the prospects for peace in the Middle East. There is recurrent alarm at the situation in North Korea and awareness of resurgent fighting in Afghanistan.
The White House's economic advisers, meanwhile, told the president during his summer break in Crawford, Texas, that they expected growth to rise to 3.7 per cent by the end of the year.
Mr Bush is said to talk to his father on average every day. Their conversations are private and White House officials refuse to discuss the advice sought or given between father and son.
But according to at least one person who knows the former president, the elder Mr Bush is in a "high state of anxiety" about Iraq and the possibility that his son could follow in his footsteps and lose the election. He notes that the elder Mr Bush was doing better in the polls than his son at this time in the election cycle.
The father's ratings hit 85 per cent in March 1991, levelled off at about 71 per cent that summer but had fallen to 31 per cent by the middle of 1992. Mr Bush's approval rating, according to a Gallup poll compiled last week, is at 59 per cent.
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