Tech stocks have lost half their value, billions of investor dollars have disappeared, mega mergers and business failures are throwing hordes of people out of their jobs, and consumer debt has reached dizzying heights.
George W. Bush is worried, and he should be. If the economy worsens and sinks into a recession, he's going to take the blame. He is going to have to act, quickly and boldly. If he fails, he's going to be a one-term president and follow in the footsteps of Herbert Hoover, who was demonized by the Democrats for decades.
Under the leadership of then DNC National Chairman Jowett Shouse, the Democrats pinned the 1929 stock market debacle and the Depression of the 1930s on Hoover. They ran against him in 1931 and continued to run against him in every election until Dwight Eisenhower came along.
In 1992 the Clinton campaign revived the strategy and ran a Jowett Shouse-type campaign against George H.W. Bush – remember "It's the economy, stupid"? The Gore people tried it this time around, trying to scare the electorate that a Bush presidency would be a recession presidency, but it didn't work.
If there is a recession in 2001, and hundreds of thousands of Americans end up out of their jobs, George W. Bush is going to be the new Herbert Hoover.
But it doesn't have to be. If Bush takes the right steps, quickly and boldly, he can stop a recession before it gets started.
Step No. 1 is to get the American people behind him. He can do that by going over the heads of the Democratic congressional leaders and their allies in the media and telling it like it is: America can hang on to its prosperity if the government – meaning the Bush administration – will be allowed to do what has to be done: Slash taxes and get rid of the thousands of burdensome regulations strangling American business and industry and adding to the price of just about everything.
Tell them we have to end our dependence on foreign oil and coal by freeing up our vast natural resources such as Alaskan North Slope oil, our enormous supplies of natural gas and low-sulphur coal deposits and other resources now locked up by stupid government actions all designed to curry favor with elitist environmentalists at the expense of the people.
Go to the people, Dubya, and tell them what you have to do, and if you are stymied in the effort to do what you have to do, the blame for the resulting recession will lie with the Democrats who would not allow you to save the economy, preferring instead for a chance to pin the Hoover label on you.
Tell the people what they need to hear – that it's the people who matter, not frogs and snail darters, flies and ants and other darlings of the environmentalist left. Pound it in – it's the people who count. And let them know that it's the people who are your sole concern.
Do it, Dubya, and this nation will be forever in your debt. The great majority of the people are behind you. Get out front and lead and they'll follow you, and America will go on to even greater heights.
Dominus Vobiscum
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