Friday, May 23, 2003 | 10:21 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
YOU BETTER hurry up and sign that tax cut, Mr. President. Your numbers are dropping fast.
Now that the war in Iraq is over and only the cleanup is left -- now there's a mouthful; and now that the war on terror is on the downhill side and Osama bin Laden is no longer a challenge -- now there's another mouthful even more difficult to swallow; and now that the nuclear tension on the Korean Peninsula is handled to everyone's satisfaction -- forget the mouthful, there is an earful we can tell you for another day; now that the warmaking powers of the commander-in-chief have been tested, the people are getting restless. As usual.
You can't blame us for the overly short attention span we have developed because we are a product of the political marketing squads whose goal it is to make us remember the good things in politics and forget the bad things. Hence, most of the time we are encouraged to change the focus, look elsewhere and forget whatever it was that bothered us yesterday.
It appears that, at least for the moment, President George W. Bush is reaping what his minions have been so deft for so long at sowing under. That old haunt from the Clinton years, "It's the economy, stupid," is forcing its way back on the stage of American life and the audience is not happy about what it sees.
What President Bush did in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction notwithstanding, was a good thing. Regardless of the reasons he used to sell us and a small part of the world on the need to stop Saddam Hussein in his half-tracks, the fact that the evil dictator is gone -- he is gone, isn't he? -- is a good thing in the history of the world. He was a bad man and it is good that his evildoing was cut short.
While Gen. Tommy Franks pulled off a most impressive battle plan with a minimum of casualties on all sides, real life and all its problems was put on hold so we could support our troops, learn the benefits of embedded newsmen and see firsthand the devastating precision power of the United States armed services. By the way, as an aside, the weapons systems and force readiness that we delighted in witnessing from our troops in and around Iraq were a direct result of decisions made during the Clinton years, just in case anyone out there really believed that any current president other than FDR could make such overpowering decisions during the first two years of his term.
But now things are slowing down a bit. Nation-building is under way and that is a slow and difficult process. And it is a boring one, so there are no illusions about keeping the attention of the electorate focused halfway around the world. Instead, people are starting to pay attention much closer to home. And the picture ain't very pretty.
Unemployment is up. Not a good sign. Consumer confidence levels are on the way down. That's not good, either. Reports of deflation -- regardless of the truth -- are not doing anything to make us feel better about tomorrow. And business people are squealing about a lack of business almost as loud as states are squealing about a lack of revenues needed to fulfill constituent needs. In short, these are not good times. Yet.
Congress has handed the president a tax cut. Actually, he will get the cut in name only since the amount he asked for has gone up in the smoke and mirrors of creative accounting. Months ago I gave up trying to plead a case for fiscal conservatism -- that was "let's pay down the debt before we give most of us who don't need it our money back" -- and joined the clamoring crowd who wanted tax relief at any cost.
And while it appears folks like me are in for a pretty big payday -- courtesy of someone else -- it doesn't look like the public is buying the president's tax-cutting act. Polls show his numbers dropping in all respects -- not unusual following some sky-high numbers only available to commanders-in-chief -- especially on his ability to handle the economy.
And while we all know that what goes down can also go up, the opposite appears to be the case with President Bush. It is reminiscent of a decade ago following the first Gulf War when President George H.W. Bush's numbers were stratospheric only to see them plunge to depths unknown once the economy came into the public's view.
If Karl Rove's goal is to avoid the Daddy Disaster of 1992, he better come up with something better than just making guys in my tax bracket happy. He needs a plan that will get this economy back on its feet along with the millions of hard-working Americans who feel their own feet shifting out from under them.
And then he needs to get President Bush in a mood to sell that plan. Not to the people who really need it -- they'll accept it with open arms -- but to the folks whose voices are heard around the White House who refuse to hear the fear in the quiet voices of real people throughout America.
We have heard that fear before. It turned an election.
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