So did Herbert Hoover.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.ht.../hines/2079091

Sept. 2, 2003, 9:08PM


Meanwhile, back at the White House
By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

PRESIDENT Bush, returning to Washington from the ranch, finds
himself in a
very unattractive position: militarily overextended abroad and
economically
underperforming at home. It's not clear which more imperils his
re-election,
but neither is, shall we say, on the plus side. Guns and butter,
you'll
recall, can be a volatile mix.

If the growing mess in Iraq isn't quite Vietnamesque, Bush's
response to
joblessness in the United States is beginning to look a bit like
Nixon-Kissinger floundering. Bush stopped by Ohio on Labor Day to
tell
workers that he has what is basically a secret plan for the economy.

When a president loses about 3 million jobs in 31 months in office
and the
best idea he can lay on a union crowd is his intention to create an
assistant secretary of Commerce for manufacturing, well, it may be
time for
a little shake-up in his domestic or economic team or, more
basically, in
his own thought process. Unless the next few months see astounding
growth in
employment, Bush will be the first president since one-termer and
fellow
Republican Herbert Hoover to lose jobs.

On the flight to Ohio, Bush should have communed with the spirit of
the late
Ohio Republican governor, James A. Rhodes. Asked what the three
biggest
issues in one of his campaigns would be, Rhodes replied
unhesitatingly:
"Jobs, jobs and jobs."

Although Bush was in a state that he carried narrowly in 2000,
almost
certainly must win if he is to be re-elected and has lost an
estimated
200,000 non-farm jobs since his inauguration, there was not much
urgency in
his remarks. Even in the face of pelting rain, Bush was upbeat: "The
economy
is beginning to grow, and that's what I'm interested in. I believe
there are
better days ahead."

So did Herbert Hoover.

Perhaps Bush is either not yet desperate over the economy, or, at
any rate,
does not want to look desperate. At least over the holiday weekend,
there
was none of his father's plangent, "The message: I care. We're
trying," from
11 years ago.

But just in case, Bush might be practicing some lines from his
father's "mea
culpa" New Hampshire tour on Jan. 15, 1992.

"I've been wrong about how fast this recovery would take," Bush-41
said. "I
have not done a good job in getting people to understand we've had a
growth
agenda ... . I can do better."

Those are already sentiments that Bush-43 could repeat with complete
assurance that they are explicitly, painfully true today.

As part of what may be a 12-step program to re-election, the
incumbent made
a very tentative start on a very long road. While certainly not
apologizing
for his multiple "leave no millionaire behind" tax cuts, Bush
conceded: "We
have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got
to move."
That may sound routinely anodyne, but remember, please, it is not a
sentiment shared by some of the president's supporters, including
some of
his fellow Republicans in Congress. Surely, they argue, any
so-called "hurt"
can be seen to by a private-sector vendor.

Bush was not exquisitely clear about what could be a key section of
his
Labor Day remarks, assuming he's willing to move on the point. Some
of the
thousands of jobs in manufacturing have been lost "because
production moved
overseas," Bush observed. Then he said that in international trade,
"we
intend to keep the rules fair." Bush was talking, elliptically but
primarily, about China. And he was picking up on a point that
several
Democratic challengers have been speaking about for weeks: The
refusal of
China to let its currency float free of the dollar, a position that
makes
its manufactured goods a bargain against U.S.-made products.

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow is in Beijing this week to discuss
the issue
with Chinese officials. Good luck. Snow was welcomed by a piece in
the
government-run China Daily that said: "China's currency,
unfortunately, is
in a position of finding itself involved in the finger-wagging
sessions that
accompany (the U.S. presidential election) ... Should China now give
in to
pressure only to face dire consequences later? No way."

In Bush's remarks in Ohio, there was a line that may provide a
window onto
the problem. Perhaps it was just a rhetorical device; perhaps it was
more.

"They tell me it was a shallow recession," Bush said.

"They tell me?" Is that the once-removed sort of manner in which a
president
should be speaking of what happened to the economy on his watch.
It's an
invitation to voters to tell him something more directly on Election
Day.

As the headline on a New York Times editorial said after Bush-41's
January
1992 visit to New Hampshire: "Stay the course. What Course?"