Bush is under pressure now...
In Growing Bad News, Risk for Bush and GOP
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 28, 2002; Page A01
For two days in a row, President Bush has inveighed against irresponsible WorldCom Inc., executives -- an aggressive response that reflects the potential danger a wave of corporate scandal represents for Bush and the GOP.
This week's revelation of massive bookkeeping fraud at the telecommunications giant is unlikely by itself to be particularly injurious to Bush, Republican and Democratic strategists agree. At the same time, however, both sides believe accumulating economic bad news may be reaching critical mass, creating a public disenchantment that could stick to the Bush administration and congressional Republicans in November.
A wave of corporate scandals -- WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia Communications, Andersen, Enron -- has hammered consumer confidence and plunged stocks deeper into a bear market. The employment picture is sluggish, the federal budget has returned to the red, and Congress must pass a law to borrow more money. The trade deficit is growing, the dollar is falling, and health care costs are rising.
Until now, this has done little to dent Bush's historic levels of public support. Three-quarters of Americans say he's doing a good job as president, the latest Washington Post poll shows -- a result similar to other surveys. The gravity-defying popularity has surprised White House aides and Democratic partisans alike, exceeding even the support that earned Ronald Reagan the "Teflon president" sobriquet.
That could be changing. A poll released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that Bush still has enviable public support of 70 percent, but only a third of Americans believe the president is "doing all he can" on the economy. Sizable numbers also expressed doubts about his handling of health care, Social Security and business scandals. Fewer than a third of Americans said that jobs were plentiful or that they expected the economy to improve in the next year.
The Democratic Party, hoping to build this sentiment, circulated an editorial yesterday from the Des Moines Register stating that "President Bush's economic policies aren't working. The government is plunging deeper into debt while the stock market falls, corporate scandals mushroom and the economy seems to be in a state of limbo."
The urgency of the matter was reflected in the distraction it caused Bush while attending the meetings of the Group of Eight industrial nations in Canada. During separate news conferences with Britain's Tony Blair and Russia's Vladimir Putin, Bush angrily criticized "corporate leaders who have not upheld their responsibility," calling WorldCom's actions "outrageous" and vowing to "hold people accountable" for fooling employees and investors.
The aggressive statements came after a huddle of White House officials contemplating the dangers of a populist attack on the administration by Democrats. The president's words had much more urgency than the White House did 10 days ago, when it released a letter from Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt saying investors "should have complete confidence" in auditors' integrity and announcing that the SEC is "10 for 10" on Bush's 10-point plan to tighten corporate oversight.
Bush advisers acknowledge that the economic bad news could eventually be damaging to the president. "Obviously, if events in the economy and the stock market don't improve and there are not a lot of barometers of victory in the war on terrorism, those can have a cumulative effect," said Matthew Dowd, polling coordinator for the Republican National Committee. "In the long term, things like that will have an effect."
But Dowd argued that the "fundamental readjustment" of Americans' views of Bush since Sept. 11 are not likely to change. Since April, Dowd has predicted that Bush's "job approval" ratings would drop as November's midterm elections approach and Democratic voters return to their party. But he doesn't expect Bush's support to drop below 63 percent of Americans -- still extraordinarily high. "They have a fundamental perception that he's up to the job," Dowd said.
Democrats argue that Americans' enduring fondness for Bush masks growing discontentment in the electorate that could be harmful to the GOP in November and damaging to the president himself in the long run.
Democratic strategist Tad Devine said that Americans' support for the way Bush is doing his job is really a reflection of his personal integrity in contrast to former president Bill Clinton's, not his policies. "People are expressing the fact that they like a president who is not getting in trouble a lot," Devine said, and that "isn't going to shape the election. I can see a November when the president has approval rate in the 70s and Democrats make gains in the House and Senate."
There is some of evidence for Devine's view. In the Pew poll, 35 percent of those who approve of Bush said they would vote for Democrats in the fall -- a greater percentage of defectors than the 24 percent of Clinton supporters in 1998 who said they planned to vote Republican. And slightly more voters said they planned to back a Democrat in November than a Republican.
"They are compartmentalizing, to use a phrase," said John Zogby, an independent pollster. "People like the guy because of the personality factor and the rally-round-the-flag factor, but it only lasts so long. People do not like the way things are going."
Zogby's latest survey gave Bush a support level of 69 percent -- but only 51 percent said Bush deserved to be reelected. At the same time, polls indicate fewer Americans think the country is headed in the right direction. A poll released Wednesday by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg found that Americans, by 10 percentage points, think the country is on the right track; late last year, the margin was as high as 38 points.
Bush and the Republicans still have plenty of support, however, even on economic matters. The same Greenberg poll found Americans, by 7 percentage points, think Republicans would do a better job handling the economy. And Republicans say Bush has little reason to fear that he will suddenly become unpopular.
One White House official argued that Bush's popularity is far more enduring than the fleeting support his father had during the Persian Gulf War. "Nine-eleven had a huge, deep, social-psychological effect unlike anything since the Kennedy assassination or Pearl Harbor," the official said.
The danger for Bush, said GOP pollster John McLaughlin, is that 70 percent of voters who owned stocks supported Bush and the Republicans in 2000. Now those voters have seen their savings shrivel. "It's not a detriment to Bush right now because the market was already going south in 2000," McLaughlin said, but "it has to be going up heading into the last year of his presidency."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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