Posted on 04/19/2003 4:20:39 PM PDT by MadIvan
Brandi, the younger sister of Private Jessica Lynch, begins her own military training this summer. In Wirt County, West Virginia, where America's most famous ex-POW will soon return home, there are not many career alternatives.
In the Lynch family's home town of Palestine, the one surviving small business, the "Whatnot Shop", scrapes by on sales of ceramic roosters, third-hand sewing machines and a selection of stuffed animals. Like many other businesses in the United States, it isn't hiring. Unemployment in the area is well over double the national average, which is already high. The logging and construction industries are in steep decline. Wirt County, with a population of 6,000, is all but bankrupt. Never mind Baghdad, say the locals. What price the economic reconstruction of rural West Virginia?
Last week, similar sentiments were being heard across the United States, as senior Democrats cheerfully emerged from their bunkers after months of edgy silence over the war in Iraq. Robert Byrd, the senator for West Virginia, even travelled home to underline a point notoriously made at the expense of President George W Bush's father, before an election 12 years ago: "It's the economy, stupid."
In New Hampshire, where the first presidential primaries for 2004 will take place early next year, Richard Gephardt, the labour unions' candidate, let it be known he was "furious" at the shaky state of America's finances. The House of Representatives minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said that now the war is over, Americans would "get back to round-the-dinner-table issues", such as jobs and affordable health care, during the coming campaign.
President Bush has splendid postwar approval ratings of 71 per cent, his highest for a year. Yet his opponents appear remarkably chipper. They believe they have acted out this election script before, and won handsomely. In the summer of 1991, President Bush's father emerged from a successful war against Saddam Hussein with ratings that the Iraqi dictator himself would have been proud to engineer.
During the subsequent 16 months, Bush senior dropped a record 57 points in the polls, bottomed out at 32 and was routed in the presidential race by Bill Clinton, a little-known politician from Arkansas. As the "liberator of Kuwait" lost by six million votes, the famous "It's the economy" slogan entered into political folklore.
As conventional wisdom has it, the first President Bush lost the peace because unemployment was rising, economic growth was sluggish and federal deficits were alarming. With his eyes on the desert horizon, the commander-in-chief had failed to attend to, or even notice, the most important battlefield in American politics: the domestic economy.
One week or so after the end of his own successful - and presumably definitive - encounter with Saddam, George W Bush also presides over an economy suffering from rising unemployment, sluggish growth and even more alarming deficits than 12 years ago. Gleeful opponents describe the similarities as "eerie". The temptation to draw parallels is forgivable, especially for an opposition yet to score a serious victory over the President since the attacks on the World Trade Center. But it would be a mistake to assume that history is about to repeat itself. For one thing, as Saddam discovered, the Bush family tends to learn from its mistakes.
An internal memo recently circulated to Republicans reads: "2003 is not 1991. Focus on jobs . . . shape the economic debate." Last week in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush gave the first of a series of speeches promoting a tax cut package worth a minimum of $550 billion. This measure, claims the White House, would create 1.4 million new jobs, if brought immediately into effect.
Later the President was in St Louis, giving the same message. Over the next two weeks, 26 Administration officials will deliver speeches on the economy across the United States. Republican Senators balking at the prospect of an even higher federal deficit have been told that the President will play "hardball" to achieve his tax-cut. This White House knows how to be relentless.
The measures will take time to work, if indeed they work at all. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in these pages last week, America's economy is undeniably in bad shape. The stock market is down by almost 30 per cent from when the President took office. A budget surplus has turned into a deficit of $400 billion.
Two million jobs have been lost. Economic growth between 2000 and 2002 was the lowest for a three-year period since - yes - the time of the first Gulf War. But no one will be able to accuse this President of blithely ignoring the problem.
President Bush can also rely on his political adviser, Karl Rove, who has earned a reputation for wrongfooting the President's opponents. Mr Rove is the senior adviser to the President in the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. He is widely credited with masterminding the success of the Republican Party during last autumn's mid-term elections, when President Bush, on the verge of war with Iraq, rallied the patriotic vote in swing states across America.
In the coming months, Mr Rove's strategic mission is to drive home the message that, in the wake of September 11, and pace 1992, "it's not just the economy, stupid". As President Bush began his tax tour, Mr Rove told American newspaper editors: "When this war ends, we will still have a very dangerous enemy in the form of international terrorism. It's not going to be, like, 'Iraq is over. America can withdraw within itself again'."
The first President Bush, even had he wanted to, could not have made the same argument. Two years before Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Berlin Wall had fallen, bringing the Cold War to an end. America had won. The philosopher Francis Fukuyama made his name by suggesting that political history had ended with a resounding victory for liberal democracies. Saddam was a playground bully to be contained. Hardly anyone had heard of Osama bin Laden.
No American thinks like that now. President Bush is, overwhelmingly, the leader they trust on matters of national security, which matters a great deal. With that crucial side of the electoral equation secure, the Bush Administration can devote itself to dealing with what Mr Rove likes to call the question of economic security.
The President has until 2004 to deal with a sliding scale of approval among American voters. According to the latest New York Times poll, just over 79 per cent of voters think he has handled the crisis with Iraq well. Just under three-quarters approve of his handling of the presidency overall. Only 46 per cent believe that he has so far made the right decisions about the nation's economy.
The figures, taken in the round, are very good. But if President Bush is to avoid the calamitous fate of his father, he could do worse than to find some jobs for the neighbours of Private Jessica Lynch.
If Gale Norton keeps screwing his rural base the way she just did ranchers in Utah, and plays to the middle in a sour economy, yes.
Gee, folks are finding an awful lot of reasons not to vote for the great "compassionate conservative". Guns, enviro issues, first amendment, abortion, big government, immigration etc. etc. on and on.
Amazing stupidity from someone who was entrusted by the good folks in all of those "red" states. It's almost as if he purposely had it in for the people most loyal to him.
You are so right. It's never mentioned.
Clinton won (lest we forget -- and I know that none of us here ever will) with just 43% of the popular vote.
We can't change history but had Perot not been in the race, it's extremely likely that Mr. Bush I would have won a substantial victory.
In 2004, the shoe's on the other (left) foot. Besides waiting to see if Nader tries again, we've got the luxurious spectacle of Sharpton mixing it up with the Dems big boys.
Can you tell me what efforts he has taken to advance the cause of ending abortion in the U.S.? I'm aware that he has done some "defunding" of programs abroad, but I'm unaware of anything in particular that he has done domestically.
2) school choice
School choice as in, ability of parents to choose charter schools or homeschools or various public schools? I don't think his increasing of the DOE and the No Child Left Behind Act and subsequent strengthening of federal influence over public schools is a good idea, nor do I think it is conservative.
3) tax cuts
I agree. I wish that we had more effective Republican leadership that was able to pass his tax cuts without trying to emasculate them first.
4) federal judges
I like his picks so far - at least the ones I've read about.
5) prayer in school
I agree.
6) pro-military
Yes, good.
7) SDI
Again, good.
8) anti-Kyoto
VERY GOOD.
9) affirmative action/racial quotas
yes yes.
10) social security reform
Unaware of this.
Make no mistake about it, if Bush vetoes the AWB allowing it to sunset, he will lose in 2004. The campaign to paint him as pro-AK47s in the schoolyards will be too effective.
As I said before, it will be best to make sure the bill never sees his desk. This way Bush doesn't have to betray gun-owners and he can tell all the Soccer Moms out there that he wanted to sign it. Everybody wins (except the anti-gunners).
The reason Bush #1 lost was because CONSERVATIVES AND INDEPENDENTS voted for Ross Perot. Most I know who voted for Perot did so because he seem to be a more conservative/libertarian/pragmatic candidate than Bush #1. Had those people known it would cost conservatives a voice for 8 years, they would never have voted the way they did. Most of them HATED Clinton, and none of them I've met supported anything the left represents.
If there is no real alternative to Bush and his values, he will win - unless the press can convince us to vote for someone else again...
If that does happen, you can say hello to Queen Hillary and her cronies, and say goodbye to the Republic.
Indeed. But as one newbie pointed out, you don't really know the law. It's not the machine guns these nuts want to use to massacre deer and call it sport! It's the Abrams tanks! I suppose that in relative terms, to the Stormfront loonies, we're all DU trolls!
I'm an Irish girl, but as far as I know the 'assault weapons' ban was introduced by Clinton initially. So you would not vote Republican, but support a Democrat because the Democrat introduced it in the first place?????(Now my head is spinning!!)
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