LadyMod at scam.com
04-03-2008, 06:47 AM
The first hint? Have these guys been sleeping the last 8 years?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/washington/03bush.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — The first hint that President Bush might be detached from the nation’s economic woes was in February, when he conceded that he had not heard about predictions of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
Then Mr. Bush went to Wall Street to warn against “massive government intervention in the housing markets,” two days before his administration helped broker the takeover of the investment bank Bear Stearns.
Now Mr. Bush is in Eastern Europe, one of eight foreign trips he is taking this year. As he delivered his farewell address to NATO on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans were holed up in the Capitol, scrambling to produce a bill to help struggling homeowners, the kind of government intervention Mr. Bush had cautioned against.
For a man who came into office as the nation’s first M.B.A. president, Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch. As the economy eclipses Iraq as the top issue on voters’ minds, even some Republican allies of the president say Mr. Bush is being eclipsed and is in danger of looking out of touch.
“He’s over there arguing about who should get into NATO, and the American people are focused on what’s in their pocketbooks,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan in his second term. “He has talked about the economy, but it is not viewed as being a satisfactory response. Unfortunately, the lasting image is of not knowing of $4-a-gallon gas.”
With the nation riveted by the race to succeed Mr. Bush, it is growing increasingly difficult for him to command the national stage. In addition to being upstaged by the candidates, Mr. Bush has ceded his bully pulpit on the economy to other Washington figures, including Congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
While Mr. Bush was in Romania on Wednesday, Mr. Bernanke was on Capitol Hill delivering a far more pessimistic vision of the economy than the president — who has said the country faces “a rough patch” — has allowed.
When the White House announced its plan to overhaul the financial regulatory system, it was Mr. Paulson, not Mr. Bush, who did the talking. And the Paulson plan, by the secretary’s own account, is not aimed at offering immediate assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/washington/03bush.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — The first hint that President Bush might be detached from the nation’s economic woes was in February, when he conceded that he had not heard about predictions of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
Then Mr. Bush went to Wall Street to warn against “massive government intervention in the housing markets,” two days before his administration helped broker the takeover of the investment bank Bear Stearns.
Now Mr. Bush is in Eastern Europe, one of eight foreign trips he is taking this year. As he delivered his farewell address to NATO on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans were holed up in the Capitol, scrambling to produce a bill to help struggling homeowners, the kind of government intervention Mr. Bush had cautioned against.
For a man who came into office as the nation’s first M.B.A. president, Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch. As the economy eclipses Iraq as the top issue on voters’ minds, even some Republican allies of the president say Mr. Bush is being eclipsed and is in danger of looking out of touch.
“He’s over there arguing about who should get into NATO, and the American people are focused on what’s in their pocketbooks,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan in his second term. “He has talked about the economy, but it is not viewed as being a satisfactory response. Unfortunately, the lasting image is of not knowing of $4-a-gallon gas.”
With the nation riveted by the race to succeed Mr. Bush, it is growing increasingly difficult for him to command the national stage. In addition to being upstaged by the candidates, Mr. Bush has ceded his bully pulpit on the economy to other Washington figures, including Congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
While Mr. Bush was in Romania on Wednesday, Mr. Bernanke was on Capitol Hill delivering a far more pessimistic vision of the economy than the president — who has said the country faces “a rough patch” — has allowed.
When the White House announced its plan to overhaul the financial regulatory system, it was Mr. Paulson, not Mr. Bush, who did the talking. And the Paulson plan, by the secretary’s own account, is not aimed at offering immediate assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure.
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