Look, Pa! No economic policy!
The reports from inside the Beltway keep telling us, with numbing repetition, that George W. Bush ("43") is utterly determined to avoid the fate of his father, George H.W. Bush ("41"). Not for 43 the sad fate of 41 -- who fell from the glory of a military victory over Iraq in Year 3 of his presidency to the ignominy of electoral defeat in year 4, because voters decided he wasn't doing enough to get a recession-burdened economy moving again. 43 is on the case! 43 will keep one eye on the bread-and-butter economic issues even as he locks his aim on Saddam Hussein. No one will be able to say that 43 doesn't care about the economy -- Karl Rove is making sure of that.
And yet, from the vantage of one year before the '04 primaries, Bush 43 looks amazingly, uncannily like a replay of Bush 41. The economic policy details differ, but the political shape is parallel.
Despite all the rumors, the recovery doesn't seem to have arrived in any neighborhood you or your friends actually live in. Nearly three years of the current downturn have left the economy still feeling like a disaster area. The Republicans now control both houses of Congress, but the Bush budget is such a hodge-podge of giveaways to the wealthy, outright deceptions and deficit-inducing, tax code-complexifying "reforms" that even the president's own party is rejecting it out of hand. His all-but-launched war on Iraq -- completely unaccounted for in that budget -- has roiled the markets and put corporate spending on hold. His team still can't get its message straight (do deficits matter or not?). Is anyone home?
Yes, a year is a long time, and a lot can happen between now and New Hampshire 2004. But we've had three years of George Bush, and three years ought to be enough time to get an economic policy together. Bush's is MIA. Unless there's a major turnaround in the next six to nine months, the Democrats ought to be able to make something of that. If they can't, they don't deserve to govern.
Postscript My readers correctly point out that we've only had two years, not three, of George Bush. (The perils of late-night posting.) I guess it just feels like a long time...
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