They Don't Get It

One of the reasons why the first President Bush lost the 1992 election was the widespread public perception that his Administration was simply out of touch with the needs and challenges faced by American families. From Patrick Buchanan's prime-time "culture war" oratory at the GOP convention to Bush's much-publicized close encounter with a grocery scanner, the Republicans basically went around wearing a sign saying "I have no idea what you're going through, nor do I really care." The voters did care, however, and went to the polls accordingly.

Fast-forward twelve years; as in 1992, a Bush is running for re-election in the face of a sluggish economy. And also as in 1992, we see more and more evidence that the White House is hopelessly disconnected from the everyday lives of American families who don't have piles of money. With jobs vanishing overseas at an alarming rate, Gregory Mankiw, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, went on record in February as saying that outsourcing is actually good for the economy, calling it "generally a positive contribution to economic prosperity." The theory is that outsourced jobs are replaced by new, better-paying jobs, but when the promised replacement jobs don't appear, it becomes little more than a cruel joke. (Mankiw retreated after the ensuing uproar, saying, "My lack of clarity left the wrong impression that I praised the loss of U.S. jobs...it is regrettable whenever anyone loses a job.")

In February, the U.S. economy created only 21,000 new jobs, less than one-tenth the number required to maintain the workforce as a whole. And all but 1,000 of those new jobs were due to increased hiring by state and local governments. Let us rewind to 2001, when the second President Bush was selling his tax-cut plan. We were promised that business owners and industry executives would take the money from those cuts and use it to hire more employees and spend more on capital equipment. Everyone benefits, right?

Wrong. What actually happened is that they pocketed the gains instead of investing them. A few statistics should put this in perspective. Since the recession "officially" ended in November 2001, corporate profits are up 30%, and since 2002, dividends paid by S&P 500 companies have increased 19%. But for those of us who live paycheck to paycheck (meaning a large majority of American workers), 2.3 million jobs have disappeared since the recession officially ended, and average weekly earnings rose just one half of one percent, far behind the rate of inflation. Even when tax-cut savings were spent on new equipment, much of the purchased apparatus was designed to allow fewer people to do the same work.

We are told not to worry, that job growth is just around the corner. But the White House has used the same "just be patient" line for more than a year now, and it's just not happening. While the economy is officially in recovery mode, very few benefits of that recovery are trickling down to the vast majority of us who work hard, live honestly, and just try to get by.

The White House's response to this state of affairs is to attempt a distraction. Traditionally, the way to redirect attention away from bad news has been to launch a splendid little war, but we've already got that in Iraq, and it's turned out to be anything but splendid or little. President Bush tried using the unquestioned achievement of the Mars rovers to propose a lunar base and a manned Mars flight, but that didn't fly - too many people saw it for the diversion it was. The flurry over Janet Jackson's revealing "wardrobe malfunction" was good for a few weeks of headlines, but that too ran out of gas.

Bush and his handlers then turned back to the same culture-war rhetoric used in 1992: demonize gays and lesbians, this time with a proposed constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. But it didn't work back then, and given the fury of openly gay Republicans combined with the notable lack of enthusiasm among the GOP rank and file, it's not working now. The campaign then made what they thought was a sure-fire move: air TV ads showing Bush as the 9/11 candidate and using footage from Ground Zero - but that imploded when the families of various 9/11 victims took exception to using the tragedy as political fodder.

It seems clear that the second Bush Administration just doesn't get it, precisely as the first one didn't. It remains to be seen whether they will straighten up and fly right, or whether the party is headed for electoral defeat in November.