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PRESEDENT BUSH CANNOT BE RE-ELECTED. HE CAN ONLY BE ELECTED OR RE-APPOINTED. HIS JOB GROWTH IS SUSPECT. EVERY ECONOMIST I HAVE HEARD SAIS WE NEED 220,000 JOBS A MONTH FOR A RECOVERY. THE QUALITY OF THESE JOBS IS ALSO SUSPECT.
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Respoinding to article about economic indicators and re-election. Perhaps the answer to your question at the end is that the American public is being less fooled by Democratic rhetoric, instead realizing that economic performance is not solely the result of policy, and that policy has helped the economy viz a viz where it would be without it.
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I'm curious about the ability of any President or Presidential candidate to truly "create" jobs. Democrats love to tout the "millions" of jobs created during the Clinton years and now John Kerry is promising to create 10 million new jobs or some such figure. To what extent can a president actually claim direct credit for job creation ( or be blamed for job loss). It seems to me that the millions of tech jobs created druing Clinton's era would have happened anyway. I cannot recall any specific programs or policies of his that could be claimed to be directly responsible for the tech boom. It seems that Presidents are, to a large extent, at the mercy of the business cycle when it comes to such things.
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Gross oversimplification. That's how I characterize your article. Perhaps many Americans understand oversimplification. That could explain why they don't agree with your conclusion. You imply that economic outcomes are a result of Bush's relatively poor policies and/or decisions. But you don't point out a single bad decision let alone explain how it influenced the economy. Allan Greenspan and his crew have great influence on short term interest rates. But can you blame him for the direction of long term rates? No, because short and long term rates are not directly related. Similarly, economic factors are influenced by many things. Presidents' decisions, while important, can't overpower all the others. The economy and business moves in cycles. If someone happens to get elected during a downturn then he has a much harder job ahead of him. The only way to directly compare Clinton vs Bush would be if they had been handed the same set of beginning circumstances. It's like reporting the successes of two pole vaulters. One makes it over the bar every time. The other fails just as often. Which is the better pole vaulter? Oh, we won't mention that one jumper has his bar set at 10 feet, the other at 20. Don't forget about things like 9/11. Clinton never had to deal with anything like that. In conclusion, your story is little more than an extended "sound bite".
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