"Around the Corner"

Remember when the economy was doing poorly in the election season last year, and Bush's response, aside from lamely blaming Clinton four years after the fact, was to repeat the mantra, "an economic recovery is just around the corner"?(Or was that Hoover in 1930? Hard to tell the difference.) Bush was saying it, Republicans were sure of it.

Well, guess what. Like most everything else Bush has promised about the economy, it's a load of crap. Remember how aggressive tax cuts for the rich (and a get-a-minor-tax-cut-now, pay-for-it-later sucker's sop to the middle class) were supposed to turn that economy right around? Remember how he ran in 2000 as the guy who could talk to the Saudis and keep oil prices reasonable? Remember how he railed at Clinton and Gore for letting oil prices go to $35/bbl., what is now an attractively low price?

Well, the economy never got better. And now economists are starting to use a rather uncomfortable word: stagflation. People still aren't getting jobs under Bush--not surprising, as he's been the worst jobs president since Hoover. In fact, of the last 14 presidents, 8 have been Republicans, and all are at the bottom of the jobs chart, while all six Democrats are at the top. Now, with a disastrous economic mix of skyrocketing oil prices, a depressed jobs market, a slowing GDP, inflation ballooning, stock market tumbling, interest rates rising, booming imports and slowing investment, the Americans who voted for Bush may finally come around to the realization the rest of us were trying to get across last year: It's the economy, stupid, and Bush is driving it into the ground.