Open Road in '04 Race

WASHINGTON — The swan dive of President Bush's ratings in 2003-04, by early June down to the low and mid-40s, is eerily similar to George H.W. Bush's plummeting numbers in 1991-92 and could signal defeat in November. Both presidents saw initial military successes in Iraq turn into political embarrassments. But the two Bushes do not appear to be on parallel tracks when it comes to economics and intra-Republican Party divisions, an advantage for the younger Bush.

When the elder Bush went down to defeat in 1992, academicians noted the widespread failure of economic models that had predicted a victory for him. Then, as now, the problem with the Bushes' presidential economics was a pronounced tilt toward capital and corporations at the expense of labor and wages, which skews growth accordingly. In early 2004, a report from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University showed corporate profits for the first time displacing wages, salaries and benefits as the principal beneficiary of national income growth during the 2002-03 recovery. Even the 1991-92 Bush "recovery" was not this warped.

Both Bush presidencies have drawn fierce criticism for whopping budget and trade deficits, and both men have presided over currency gyrations and a weakened dollar. Skillful economic management is not one of their traits, and surveys this spring have confirmed voter skepticism of White House policies.

The principal component of both declining Bush trajectories involves war with Iraq. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the first President Bush topped out in the polls at a job-approval rating of 89%, the highest since polling had begun. But by mid-1992, his rating had collapsed into the low 30s, an extraordinary 57-point decline. Besides the economy, the citizenry felt that Bush had failed in Iraq; three of four respondents told pollsters that the United States was wrong to have stopped fighting before Saddam Hussein was removed from power.

Third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot also drew blood in the autumn debates when he charged that Bush bore responsibility for helping Hussein build up his military forces before the Gulf War; he also criticized the incumbent's seeming involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. When a special prosecutor, just days before the election, alleged that Bush had been "in the loop" of the arms-for-hostages affair, Democratic challenger Bill Clinton jumped five points in the polls. For Bush, scandal and failure in the Middle East replaced triumph.