Over a period of eight years in the White House, every president changes.
The results are internal and external.
Here are two pictures demonstrating the toll of the years on President George W. Bush: The hair more gray, the wrinkles pronounced.
The first, in the initial weeks of his presidency, shows a confident Bush at a Townsend, Tenn., elementary school on Feb. 21, 2001. The Twin Towers were still standing. The American economy was still standing tall. Here is a president on top of the world.
The second, below, shows the president in the Rose Garden on Oct. 14, 2008, speaking to reporters. The topic was the financial rescue package.
The eyes, the forehead, the hair: the toll of the job can be fierce.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photos: Top, Kenneth Lambert / Associated Press. Bottom, Alex Wong / Getty Images
In recent days, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has compared George W. Bush and Republican John McCain to the Lone Ranger and Tonto, or to Batman and Robin.
But today, Obama said that comparing McCain to Bush wasn't really fair to Bush. In a rain-drenched speech in Chester, Pa., Obama said that McCain would be worse for the economy than Bush.
John McCain has ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy toward a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas. When it comes to the issue of taxes, saying that John McCain is running for a third Bush term isn’t being fair to George Bush.
Obama said McCain is proposing $300 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and $700,000 in tax cuts for the average Fortune 500 CEO, while providing no tax relief for 100 million middle-class families. “That’s not something even George Bush proposed,” he said. He added:
The fact is, there's only one candidate with a plan that could eventually raise taxes on millions of middle-class families, and it isn't me. It's my opponent, who'd make you pay taxes on your healthcare benefits for the first time ever.
The weather that halted Game 5 of the World Series Monday night continued to bear down on the region, so supporters were buffeted with pouring rain, whipping winds and near-freezing conditions. But Obama told the cheering crowd that "this is an unbelievable crowd for this kind of weather, thank you so much. I just want all of you to know, if we see this kind of dedication on election day, there is no way were not going to bring change to America.”
-- Seema Mehta (in Chester, Pa.) and Johanna Neuman (in Washington)
For weeks now, global markets have been plummeting. Major governments have pumped big bucks into the banking sector, seemingly to little effect. Even Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman and so-called "oracle of Wall Street," told Congress last week that the dysfunctional economy had left him in "a state of shocked disbelief."
So today in his weekly radio address, President Bush tried to calm fears about a global recession by defending the federal government's "bold action to stabilize our economy" with a $700-billion bailout. He cautioned against abandoning capitalism or experimenting with socialism.
Open market policies have lifted standards of living and helped millions of people around the world escape the grip of poverty. These policies have shown themselves time and time again to be the surest path to creating jobs, increasing commerce and fostering progress. And this moment of global economic uncertainty would be precisely the wrong time to reject such proven methods for creating prosperity and hope.
Mostly, he urged patience. With world leaders meeting in Washington for an economic summit hosted by Bush on Nov. 15, the president said the government's muscular steps to buttress the market "are beginning to show results, but it will take time for their full impact to be felt."
The president-elect -- whoever he is -- will also be invited to attend the summit, scheduled less than two weeks after the election. Bill Burton, spokesman for Democrat Barack Obama, ahead in national polls, said Bush's words and actions make the case for his candidate. In a statement, Burton said:
After casting his ballot for John McCain, George Bush took to the airwaves and eloquently endorsed his economic plan that represents four more years of policies that give billions in tax breaks to CEOs and big corporations but does nothing to create jobs or provide relief to more than 100 million middle class Americans.
When he was testifying before Congress the other day about the world's economic crisis, former Bush Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said that too many unqualified people got loans. He suggested that one of the culprits might have been George W. Bush's "ownership society."
Borrowing the concept from conservative thinkers, President Bush began touting an ownership society early in his first term. The idea encompassed a range of policies -- from healthcare to house buying -- in which Republicans believed government should get out of the way and empower individuals to make their own financial decisions. In a fact sheet, the White House said:
The president believes that homeownership is the cornerstone of America's vibrant communities and benefits individual families by building stability and long-term financial security.
Challenging the real estate and mortgage finance industries to "close the gap that exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and non-minorities," the president argued that increasing homeownership would enroll everyone in the fabric of their communities, thus decreasing crime, improving schools and cementing a sense of local civic pride.
So today, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked if the initiative went too far. Maybe, a reporter suggested, it was the president who encouraged the bad lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage mess.
In a rare moment of bipartisanship, she not only defended President Bush but President Clinton as well. In fact, she more or less blamed Congress, saying:
The president did promote homeownership, especially minority homeownership, which went up at an amazing rate. The president never recommended risky loans. And in fact, we were trying to put the kibosh on that for a long time, and we didn't have a willing partner in Congress.
We do think that people being able to own their homes is a way to help establish good communities, good families and help improve the economy. So we did support that. But no one in this administration, nor the previous administration, would have supported people getting into situations that they weren't going to be able to -- where they weren't going to be able to pay for their own mortgages.
Spain, the world's eighth largest economy, will not be attending the summit on the world financial crisis the White House is convening in Washington on Nov. 15.
Saudi Arabia's coming. Ditto Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and the European Union. Oh yes and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the president of the World Bank, the United Nations secretary-general, and the chairman of the Financial Stability Forum have also been invited to participate.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto insisted there was no deliberate intention to exclude Spain, which has a Socialist prime minister. He explained that the G20 was formed by the world's economic giants, the G-7, plus some emerging economies back during the market crisis there in the 1990s. Instead, the White House invited Madrid to convey its thoughts through the European Union.
Spain, pressing for inclusion, is not amused. The IBEX Spanish stock market is hitting record lows, food costs have risen by 60% over the last 18 months, and tourism, a mainstay of the economy, is down, says the government.
All of which led Spain's minister for industry, Miguel Sebastian, the other day to blame President Bush for the world economic crisis.
"It's evident that the crisis started in the United States," he said Wednesday. "There are only 13 days of Bush left, and they will [come to an end] quickly." (Sebastian of course meant 13 days to the election. There are months left of the administration.)
Democrat Barack Obama, during his first debate with Republican John McCain, noted the Arizona senator's stated resistance to meeting with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Socialist who was elected in 2004 and reelected this year.
During the debate at Ole Miss, an incredulous Obama said, "He [John McCain] even said the other day that he would not meet potentially with the prime minister of Spain, because he -- you know, he wasn't sure whether they were aligned with us. I mean, Spain? Spain is a NATO ally."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images of Nissan workers in Barcelona protesting job cuts on Oct. 23, 2008
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino doesn't do economic forecasts. No reasonable White House spokesperson would.
So, let's just call today's discussion from the briefing room lectern, prompted by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan'stestimony on Capitol Hill, the "Economic Reality Show."
She said:
We're in for what is probably going to be a tough quarter, and that's just reality. I don't forecast from here, but I just was looking at reality, and how long it's going to take for people to return this country to job growth. It could be a while.
Just wait, she said, until the $700-billion package (a.k.a. the Wall Street bailout) kicks in.
Which it hasn't.
Indeed, she said, it was probably accurate to say that not a single dollar had yet changed hands as a result of the plan.
Sen. John McCain hit him for leaving future generations with a mountain of debt, failing to meet the cost of bigger Medicare expenses, and abusing the power of his office. He said of the Bush years and his own Republican Party: "We just let things get completely out of hand."
But White House Press Secretary Dana Perino brushed it aside today.
McCain dissed the president in an interview with the Washington Times -- not a bunch to lightly dis the prez themselves, at least not the way they go after the Democrats. He went after him again today, while campaigning in Florida, for not moving quickly enough to help homeowners in the housing and credit crisis.
But none of it could bring Perino to suggest the president was unhappy with the Republican presidential nominee.
Here's how she dismissed the matter at the daily White House news briefing:
This is all I'll say on it, is that the president stands by his policies. The president believes that a Republican Congress has got a lot more done than the current Democrat-led Congress. He supports John McCain and he still believes that he can and should win, and he'll continue to support him until election day.
Question: Follow on that, McCain said that the president had let things get completely out of hand. That's a pretty damning statement of a president who McCain supported and supports him.
Perino: I'm not going to comment on the words that our candidate chooses to use. All I'll say is that the president stands by his policies. He also stands by John McCain.
During the two weeks before election day 2000, President Clinton was a busy man.
He spent nearly half his time out of town, campaigning for Democratic candidates in New York (his wife and others), Kentucky, California, back to New York, and Arkansas. He spoke at several political events in Washington, D.C., too.
There were private receptions and public rallies. And even as Al Gore, the Democrats' presidential candidate and Clinton's vice president, sought to distance himself from the president to leave no doubt about his own political identity, Clinton was aggressive -- and very out there -- on behalf of Democratic candidates.
Friday is pretty busy: Briefings at the National Security Agency, an Oval Office meeting with the secretary-general of NATO, and a ceremony bringing Albania and Croatia into the Atlantic alliance.
The president is spending this weekend at Camp David, the ultra-private presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
On Monday, he is meeting with the president of Paraguay, and, with Laura Bush, he is speaking at a White House reception marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt.
And on it goes.
What's missing?
Hint: Is there an election taking place?
When he blessed McCain's bid for the presidency last March, Bush said he would campaign for or against the Republican -- whichever would help.
That was before the Wall Street meltdown and broader global financial crisis. So, we're not likely to be seeing any picture like this one -- at the White House or anywhere -- in the next few days:
As of now, with his poll numbers continuing to bump along near record lows for an incumbent president, and even McCain structuring much of his campaign as a contrast to the last eight years, Bush is neither working for nor against his preferred successor.
He's just disappearing.
For the president's public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
-- James Gerstenzang
Upper photo: President Clinton at a Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza rally in 2000. Credit: Anacleto Rapping / Los Angeles Times. Lower photo: Sen. John McCain and President Bush at the White House in 2008. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian / The White House.
Nearly a month after Congress approved President Bush's $700-billion bailout of U.S. banks, the stock market is still in free fall, unemployment keeps rising and the global capitalistic system is on the brink. In fact the poison has long since spread from America to the rest of the world. The photo above is a shot of broker Simone Wallmeyer at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, as the market fell today.
And what about the American citizens who inundated the U.S. Capitol switchboard with calls of protest? The ones who vented their rage on radio talk shows and propelled a revolt by House Republicans that nearly derailed the proposal? Apparently they like the plan even less now than they did before.
According to a new poll from CNN, 46% of Americans supported the bailout back on Oct. 3. By Oct. 17, that number had dropped to 40%. Likewise, the number who opposed the idea has increased during the same period, to 56% from 53%.
Even more striking was the number -- 58% -- who think it's a bad idea for the U.S. government to take an equity share in big companies that are in danger of going out of business. Apparently, Americans think that the rules of the road should apply to Lehman Brothers as well as Joe the Plumber.
As for Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary who has been putting his department on lock down to come up with a plan to rescue Wall Street, his numbers are not much better than the president's, clocking in with a 28% approval rating.
Of course both President Bush and his Treasury secretary are still more popular than Congress, which dipped below 20% in a recent Gallup Poll.
When President Bush sits down next month with the leaders of the major developed and developing nations to figure out what went wrong with the global economy and hash out a coordinated response, save a seat for: President-elect Barack Obama? President-elect John McCain?
The president-in-waiting has been invited to the Nov. 15 summit of the Group of 20, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said this morning. Presumably, no RSVPs have been returned.
(She didn't note that Obama had called on Sept. 19 for such a meeting. She didn't have to. He pointed it out himself after a meeting with economic advisors in Richmond, Va.)
Certainly, there will be all the talk between election day and the inauguration on Jan. 20 of "just one president at a time," but Perino said: "We will look for his input after the election."
But how much authority will the president bring to the table? That's a trickier question for the White House.
Here's Perino's answer:
I think all of the leaders have agreed that we wanted to have this summit. They wanted the president to be able to host it, and he's excited to be able to do so. We will seek the input of the president-elect. But we didn't want the financial crisis to happen at all and -- but now that it's happened, we can't control the timing of it. And we think it's important not to wait to have this meeting.
In other words, the crisis is now, the president is the president, and he'll soldier ahead until he's no longer the president.
One thing the participants can expect to hear from the president (after all, he's been saying it for years): This is not the time to retreat on international trade; rather, the global economy and individual countries will benefit from liberalized trade rules.
One thing you are not likely to hear coming out of the meeting: specific details of a new course to solve the problem.
That, Perino said, would be more likely from another summit -- and, yes, George W. Bush is thinking of attending. As president. It would be that soon.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
