Modest To A Fault

Think of it as the flip side of the infamous "new tone" - a chronic inability, and perhaps flat unwillingness, on the part of President Bush to take credit for his many successes, not least of which is the booming economy:

Because the Administration seems unable to sell genuine triumphs as triumphs, it is forced to claim credit for recent congressional outpourings, and argue that they represent economic progress. In a desperate and wholly unnecessary search for victories, the White House claimed paternity of the energy and highway bills....

The pity of all this is that the Administration would not have to claim these legislative travesties as its own, or as victories, if it had the skills needed to explain to voters that it has been a fine steward of their economic interests, these legislative extravagances notwithstanding. For we are living in an economy that is about as good as it gets.

"Goldilocks" is the adjective now most often being applied to the economy - not too hot, not too cold. "Boom" is a better descriptive, say many of my business friends. Last year the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.2%, the fastest in five years. Preliminary estimates are that the economy grew at a rate of 3.4% in the past quarter, and that figure will almost certainly be revised upward. That was the ninth straight quarter in which the economy has grown at an annual rate of more than 3%, and compares with a 2.1% rate, and falling, in the last quarter of the Clinton administration. Even the formerly woebegone manufacturing sector is growing. And with consumer spending so high that inventories have been depleted, business investment on the rise, profits exceeding expectations, and the housing market going from record to record, economists are scrambling to raise their projections for economic growth in the second half of this year and early 2006.

And let's not forget employment. Remember the "jobless recovery" canard the Democrats flaggelated like a dominatrix with an runaway biceps spasm? Does 2.4 million new (and decidedly non-hamburger-flipper) jobs in the past year alone sound like a jobless anything?

Now figure in the messes that Dubya inherited, and what he did to turn things around:

Bill Clinton left him a weakening economy; the dot-com bubble burst; 15 Saudis and four friends, believing America to be the "weak horse" in the international race, decided to bring down the World Trade Center; a string of scandals, hatched before Bush took office, weakened confidence in corporate America; our European trading partners decided to will themselves into recession with an odd combination of fiscal and monetary policies grafted onto rigid labor and product markets; and, later, $60 oil made its appearance. Not the best of hands.

But Bush played it very well indeed. With the help of Larry Lindsey, he fashioned and pushed through a shrewd tax-cutting program that was part neo-Keynesian political catnip ($500 checks for consumers) and part supply-side relief that stimulated business investment. More important, he established a tone that combined Reaganesque sunny optimism with pro-business actions such as class-action and bankruptcy law reform to provide further encouragement to a level of risk-taking and entrepreneurial activity that is the envy of the world.

Look what we just did. In the space of a few paragraphs we've shown how strong the economy is, how weak it was, and how George Bush is, from a public policy standpoint, principally responsible for this remarkable turnaround. So why can't he take credit for it?

I don't think it's so much that he can't - he showed in his re-election campaign that he's capable of bringing it when he puts his mind to it. I think it's that he won't, because of his maddeningly inate modesty and because of his anacrhonistic view of politics and the presidency.

I've commented on many previous occasions that in just about every way, Bush43 is the "anti-Clinton." Clinton was narcissistic, Bush is humble; Clinton was a gloryhound, Bush is self-effacing; to Clinton everything was about him, while to Bush it's about his "teammates" and the American people.

More to the point, Clinton was the originator, and personification, of the "permanent campaign." For Mr. Bill there was no such thing as a political off-season. He never campaigned in election seasons and governed the rest of the time; after the 1994 mid-term election disaster especially, he never stopped campaigning.

GDub, by raving contrast, looks upon campaigning as something distasteful that has to be put up with for a few months every couple of years and then put away like winter clothing so he can get back to "governing" and "reaching out" and "bipartisanship." It isn't that his PR shop is staffed with "second-stringers" necessarily; it's that they are, frankly, shamefully underutilized.

Is it any wonder that so many Americans think we're still in a recession (which the numbers now show we never were at all)? Or that the President's approval numbers, even adjusting for Extreme Media poll sampling bias, can be so low in the midst of all this plenty?

This is what Mr. Bush either doesn't grasp or simply doesn't care about: tooting your own horn in politics isn't just about patting yourself on the back, though that is important. It's also about keeping the record straight and the people informed. And that has never been a bigger challenge in a day and age when the DisLoyal Opposition and the EM have jettisoned honor, honesty, and integrity in their obsession with bringing down this President and burying everything he stands for.

For all the mistakes of Bush the father that Bush the son has striven to avoid repeating, this stubborn nice-guy-ism is the one of which he hasn't even pretended to steer clear. And that's the one that arguably delivered the killing blow to his dad's presidency. That it didn't the son's as well was the luck of the opposition draw.

But if Dubya doesn't start doing some belated chest-thumping in the not-too-distant future, the impact could be adversely felt on GOP fortunes next year and beyond.

For a man as unconcerned about his "legacy" as his predecessor was obsessed with his, t'would be a bitter one if the former's neglect ended up resurrecting the latter's from its well-deserved oblivion.