The gathering threat from a tepid economy has made Bush vulnerable, evoking nightmares of the familial past.The economy tanked his father's bid for a second term despite his success in sending Saddam Hussein packing from Kuwait. For the son, both the war and the economy look messy. The White House fumbled twice last month over the jobs issue, giving the Democrats lethal ammo. First, Bush's top economic advisor, Gregory Mankiw, decided to speak as an economist, not a politician. While releasing the annual economic report, he said jobs moving overseas were "probably a plus for the economy in the long run". A bolt of lightning struck the White House. Mankiw, a Harvard professor, was asked to eat his words in public. Bush swiftly distanced himself saying, "There are people looking for work because jobs have gone overseas."
Then came the administration's overly rosy prediction of creating 2.6 million jobs this year. Bush disowned the figure even though he had signed the report, going instead for a lame "I think the economy's growing and I think it's going to get stronger". The Dems couldn't believe their luck—the disarray in the White House was evident on the one issue that Americans care most about. In a recent survey, nearly 79 per cent Americans said they consider the economy most important. "The Republicans are feeling the heat. They don't have a gameplan," says Catherine Mann, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics.
The Democrats are using thinly veiled metaphors— "foreign" workers and "cheap" labour—to whip up advantage. Senator Kerry, the putative Democratic Party candidate, went full barrel against bosses who send jobs abroad, calling them "Benedict Arnold CEOs" in a reference to the hero-turned-traitor of the American war of independence. Kerry wants the traitor CEOs' incentives cut, tax loopholes closed, profits monitored. He has introduced a bill demanding that call centre employees identify their locations, one of the many efforts to penalise companies. He says Bush is "on the run" because on his watch the country has lost 2.2 million jobs. What he forgets to mention is that outsourcing accounts for less than 10 per cent of that figure.
But the original anti-outsourcing bill, banning outsourcing of federal contracts overseas, which is now signed into law, was sneaked in by a Republican senator. George Voinovich from Ohio cleverly misled Indian diplomats into thinking his bill was narrowly targeted to a few programmes in one department but it emerged that politicians would interpret it broadly. He was thinking ahead—cashing in on a wave of anger which many in the Indian establishment were slow to recognise. As India's lobbyists struggled to track the manoeuvre in the legislative sausage machine on Capitol Hill, he scored a big hit for Ohio, a battleground state in the election. It has lost 2,70,000 jobs since Bush took over.
