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Economic News Isn't Helping Bush
President Bush's approval ratings are falling even though government economic reports lately have generally been positive.
(By Kevin Lamarque -- Reuters)
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The July job gains were shared among racial and ethnic groups. The unemployment rate for whites was unchanged at 4.3 percent. The rate for blacks fell to 9.5 percent from 10.3 percent in June, and the Latino rate was 5.5 percent, down from 5.8 percent.
Ray Phelan, 68, a Republican accountant in Daytona Beach, Fla., said Bush is getting a bum rap on an economy that, as far as he can see, is booming. "The economy is great," he said. "I think the best thing the president can do for the economy is keeping a positive image out there."
But Bush still may have a tough sell, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. The good numbers, she said, don't match the experience of voters who continue to fret over the job market, fear global competition and struggle to keep up, especially as gasoline prices remain well above $2 a gallon and health care costs continue to rise.
That perspective was backed by interviews with voters across the country who answered a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll and agreed to discuss their responses.
Jerry Lee, 55, an electrical engineer and political independent in Austin, was laid off three years ago when his company, Cirrus Logic Inc., began hiring engineers in China. As a worker displaced by international trade, he qualified for a year-long, federally funded job retraining course, lived for six months on unemployment benefits and applied for at least 200 jobs. He is still jobless; engineering positions come up only for those trained to help the housing boom, he said -- civil, structural or land-use experts. And qualified applicants are plentiful enough that companies see no need to retrain a semiconductor expert, even one with 30 years of experience and a master's degree.
Applications "just drop into a black hole and go away," Lee said.
Positive as it was, yesterday's economic news did indicate some concerns. Higher energy costs in the past year have meant that wage gains barely outpaced inflation.
"Incomes rose solidly in July," said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group. But, he said, "much of that extra income went into their gas tanks since gasoline prices rose by close to 7 percent" last month.
Peg Dameron, 51, a Republican nurse in Guilderland, N.Y., said she voted for Bush in 2000 but is disenchanted over Iraq, health care issues and a failure to raise the minimum wage. "We're just belittling the poor," she said.
