WASHINGTON — A disappointing record last year in poverty, middle-class income and the availability of health insurance threaten President Bush's effort to build faith in his economic performance at next week's Republican National Convention.
But the trends' ultimate effect may turn on whether Sen. John F. Kerry can exploit these issues more effectively than he has in his Democratic presidential campaign.
With the release Thursday of the Census Bureau's annual economic report card, Bush achieved an unwelcome trifecta: For each year of his presidency, the number of Americans in poverty and the number without health insurance increased while the median household income declined at least a little.
Those trends are especially embarrassing given the indications from senior Republicans that Bush intended to devote at least part of the convention to buffing his credentials as a "compassionate conservative" -- a theme he stressed in 2000 but has mostly let lapse.
"It complicates his ability to do that," says Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political scientist and longtime Bush follower. "He's got his hands full."
The new figures were likely to affect the campaign most immediately by forcing more attention on healthcare: The Census Bureau reported that the number of Americans without insurance rose to nearly 45 million.
That means the ranks of the uninsured increased by almost 5.2 million since Bush took office -- a number bigger than the population of Minnesota -- and the share of Americans without coverage is now higher than when President Clinton launched his doomed effort to guarantee universal access in 1993.
This year, Kerry has proposed the most ambitious and expensive program to expand coverage since Clinton's plan crashed. But while Kerry instantly cited the Census Bureau numbers in a campaign appearance Thursday, most experts agreed the Democrat had not found a way to ignite a sustained domestic debate with Bush, not only on healthcare but on the broader issues of economic insecurity symbolized by the new figures.
"The problem is that as long as the campaign is about the war in Iraq or terrorism, the Democratic candidate has not been able to utilize his natural advantage on issues like this," said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy at New York University. "These numbers are only powerful if John Kerry uses them."
