Economy Bush and Booming Economy-

Economy

Bush and Booming economy- will that help?

So the economy is growing at an impressive rate of 3.5%- well that should have been a very encouraging sign for Bush administration. A growth rate, which is even better than it was during Clinton era, should have made Bush supporters a little optimistic though not overly so. But it seems that economy growing or sluggish doesn't really matter after all. Political policies are usually a more powerful factor than economy to determine the popularity of a President. So the answer to the question- 'will the booming economy help President Bush?' could be nothing but a resounding No.

If I had been making this speech prior to the mid-term elections, I would have been rather reluctant or at least hesitant in being so forceful in my conclusion. After all, economy is important and with a growth rate so strong, why wouldn't people support the current administration. But the results of the mid-term have made it absolutely clear that the only factor that really counted were the political policies or as "U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan put it Tuesday, "There are three leading issues here: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq." (Salt Lake) So economy has taken a backseat.

Yes we certainly didn't want our people losing anymore jobs, downsizing had become a terrifying term that no one really wanted to define, and sadly but honestly unemployment rate was something I wouldn't really want to know about. So things are better now. Economy is growing which means more jobs and less unemployment in the country. Democrats' claim that economy was sluggish could be easily refuted by well-documented facts about current growth rate. All that was promising but Bush still lost sorely in both houses of Congress indicating people's complete lack of confidence in his policies.

The reason is simple. When you have millions of your soldiers deployed far away fighting a messy battle for even messier cause, and taxpayers' money is rapidly being spent on the maintenance of troops who are doing something even they do not believe in- and when hundreds and thousands of innocent lives are being killed, tortured and abused by those very troops- in such a situation- frankly who on earth would care about 3.5% growth rate. The only people that might pay attention to that are the huge corporate executives and we already know how hated that segment is. Economy did not help Bush and it will definitely become an even poorer supporter now that Democrats have swept the polls.