From his bumbling press conference yesterday came this revealing statement from President Bush (as reported by the New York Times):
"The bottom line is this: We're going through a tough time," Mr. Bush said. "But our economy's continued growing, consumers are spending, businesses are investing, exports continue increasing and American productivity remains strong."
What's missing from this description of the economy today? The prosperity of the American people themselves.
What Bush could not say was that wages are improving, incomes are up, the struggle of average people is getting better. And of course for voters, this is all that really matters.
The national Republican Party's ideological blindness to the worsening conditions of average people these last few years is the primary cause of its collapse as a national Party, and is the issue driving this election. Performances like the one from the President yesterday, and the utter cluelessness of his statements, just reinforce American's fears that there is nobody in DC interested or capable of looking out for them.
Nero. Hoover. Chauncey Gardner. Mr. Magoo. Marie-Antoinette. Howdy-Doody. Take your pick. Leader? President? American patriot? No f-ing way. The President of the United States has become an out-of-touch joke, and in a Parlimentary system would have been tossed from office a long time ago. In these trying times, his profound weakness is going to be felt deeply by the American people, and make finding a path forward that much more difficult.
Or perhaps he will just be known in history simply as Bush, with that name and his visage taking its place next to these other clueless characters, fictional and historic.
Update: Of course that the economy is driving the disatisfaction of the voters is not new. We released this analysis right after the last elections which makes the case that it was the economy much more than the Iraq War that drove the GOP from office in 2006.
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