Will George W. Bush's Approval Ratings Parallel His Father's?
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well with the war in Iraq in its final stages, President Bush's approval rating is above 70 percent. Twelve years ago his father enjoyed a 90 percent approval rating at the end of the first Gulf War. But just nine months later had fallen more than 40 points, mostly due to the economy. Our Jeff Greenfield looks into whether the parallels will be too much to overcome.</s>JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): Yes, the symbolism was pretty clear on Tuesday. On income tax deadline day, the president called for a tax cut.</s>BUSH: ... totaling at least $550 billion.</s>GREENFIELD: But the message wasn't just about taxes, but about the economy. As it was today.</s>BUSH: In order for all Americans who are looking for work to find work, the Congress must pass this jobs package.</s>GREENFIELD: The turn to economic matters from a month's long focus on Iraq comes with an irresistible historical link: the fate of the last President Bush defeated for re-election a year and a half after victory in the first Gulf War.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has to pay attention to the economy, which his father didn't.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: '91 is not 2003.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats have been saying, "Like father, like son."</s>GREENFIELD (on camera): All of which raises two questions. How is the economy doing, and what does it mean politically? (voice-over): The numbers are not that good. Two million jobs lost in the last two years. Some 465,000 just in the last two months. Economic growth that's been close to no growth at all. But not all the news is bad. Unemployment is 5.8 percent. That's higher than two years ago, but not historically high. Consumer confidence in the last month bumped up, but that may be a reaction to the war news. The Dow Jones average is up 10 percent in the last month, but down some 28 percent from its 2000 high. But the lurking fear is that some fundamental dilemmas, overcapacity in some industries, the lingering post-9/11 risk aversion, may make the long-term economic news bad. And that generally means bad news for any incumbent, despite the president's 70-plus percent job approval rating. In fact, the only president re- elected in bad economic times was FDR in 1936, because the country believed he was trying hard to end the depression. Moreover, voters tend to be unforgiving in the face of bad news. In 1980, an oil embargo helped plague Jimmy Carter with inflation and an industrial recession and long gas lines. He lost big. And the first President Bush lost, even though the recession had ended almost a year before the 1992 election. Right now, the president gets mixed marks on the economy and on his tax cut proposals. So we are again left with more questions than answers. Two, in fact. First, will the economy next year produce the kinds of impacts voters feel directly? Job losses, for instance. And if it does, will voters reward the president for trying to make things better or blame him for failing? Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.