Bush Plans Roundtable To Reassure Investors
Wall Street Speech Drew Little Praise
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 13, 2002; Page A13
President Bush will launch a new effort to reassure investors and financial markets on Monday after failing to do so with his widely panned speech on Wall Street this week, his aides said.
Bush, who will attempt to get off the defensive by staging an economic roundtable at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, plans to stress his belief that the economy is fundamentally sound, the aides said. He also plans to acknowledge "economic challenges" the nation faces, including corporate accounting abuses.
Administration sources said Bush will try to distract attention from dismal stock market indexes by pointing to other economic indicators, including low inflation and interest rates. That is a change from his past practice of urging audiences not to pay undue attention to fluctuating measures of economic health.
"The president knows small investors are concerned about the economy, and he wants to communicate directly with them," a senior administration official said. "Investors want to know that there is a plan to stop the daily barrage of corporate-abuse horror stories."
Bush plans to announce no new policies, said the aides, who have already scheduled economy-related events for him into the fall.
At the same time, administration officials have begun accusing Democrats of hurting confidence in the economy by castigating Bush for his measured reaction to the accounting scandals. And White House press secretary Ari Fleischer sought to distance Bush from the week's 694.97-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average.
"After the president's speech Tuesday, the market went up 28 points, and only an hour and a half after the president's speech did the market decline," Fleischer said. "That's for those of you who, as Washington political reporters, have some type of savvy about knowing what makes markets go up and down."
White House officials had said before Bush's New York speech that he hoped to hearten traders and investors with harsh plans to crack down on corporate fraud -- and perhaps spark a rally. Instead, financial markets plunged and congressional Democrats -- and then Republicans -- swiftly endorsed tougher measures, calling Bush's proposals inadequate.
"What he needed was a rise-to-the-war speech, but because of his sensitivity to the markets his speech was too cautious," a senior Republican official said.
Bush aides, increasingly skittish about the listless economy's possible impact on this fall's congressional elections, suffered one of their most discouraging weeks of the administration as they spent day after day answering questions the speech provoked about the president's business dealings when he was an oil company director in Texas a decade ago.
Republican strategists said they also worry about a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the accounting practices of Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based energy and construction firm, when Vice President Cheney was its chief executive.
"We've just got to ride it out," a White House official said. "You just have to sit back and wait for the Democrats to overshoot. They have to convince the country that George Bush and Dick Cheney are dishonest and unethical. People are not going to believe that."
In an effort to highlight Bush's corporate responsibility plan as more restrictive measures moved ahead on Capitol Hill, the White House hurriedly added a meeting for Bush with his new Corporate Fraud Task Force before he headed to Camp David yesterday. The task force, headed by Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, includes officials from several agencies that deal with white-collar crime, including the FBI.
Although some in government view the task force as a public relations gesture, senior officials called it a crucial part of Bush's plan to focus government resources on corporate fraud prosecutions.
Bush gave a thumbs-up and said, "Great," when asked how the meeting went. Reporters have not had a chance to question him substantively since a news conference on Monday, when he was asked repeatedly about his record as a Texas business executive.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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