The silver lining: Maybe at last we can finally retire
that
awful phrase that has been flapping its way through the newspaper
headlines
since the Clinton campaign of 1992, "It's the economy, stupid."
No, it's not the economy, stupid. If it were the economy,
stupid, then House Speaker Dennis Hastert would be yielding his chair
to
Dick Gephardt, and George Bush would be deluged in rotten cabbages
every
time he appeared in public.
The economy, stupid? Let's take a look.
The markets? Down, down, down. During Bush's term, the Dow
has
gone from 10,578.20 on Jan. 22, 2001, to 8,397.03 on Oct. 31, 2002 --
a
decline of 20.6 percent. Unemployment? Up, up, up. January 2001 to
October
2002, nonfarm payrolls have fallen by 1.49 million, as the jobless
rate
has
jumped in Bush's term from 4.2 percent to 5.7
Basic economic indicators? Teetering between indifferent
and
terrifying. Gross domestic product, which averaged a 3.1 percent
annual
growth rate in the first seven quarters under Clinton, compared with a
1.4
percent average in the same period under Bush.
In the second quarter alone, pension wealth fell by over
$469
billion, or 5.3 percent. Housing prices cushioned the blow a little
but
still left a net decline in wealth of 3.4 percent in one quarter, with
its
successor shaping up to be just as bad. It looks as though the boom in
house
prices has topped out. Oil prices are up 40 percent since the start of
the
year. The telecommunication industry is on its a--, and it will take a
very
long time to crawl back from overcapacity in the 90 percent range. The
airline industry is on life support.
The official rate of profit on capital stock in the
non-financial corporate sector as a whole is now is at its lowest
level of
the post-war period (except for 1980 and 1982).
A recession? Most assuredly. Prospects of long-term
economic
doldrums? Near certain.
OK. So not only do we have an economy slowly flapping its
way
to
the bottom of the fishtank, we have two men in the White House who,
scarcely
two months ago, were hiding out in some subterranean war room in the
Appalachians, hoping to dodge subpoenas on account of their shady
business
conduct, even as all their buddies at Enron were striking to make
deals
with
the Justice Department.
It's true. Bush's Harken antics make the Clintons'
involvement
in Whitewater look like the pitiful little failed real estate deal
that it
was. Here we have a rich mine of corruption and insider dealing
featuring
such highlights as the Harvard endowment bailing out Junior at the
behest
of
a Texas oilman. We have officials in the administration of Bush Sr.,
tearing
up SEC rules to save the a-- of the president's son. We have ... well,
you
know the story.
And Cheney? As bad, if not worse, in terms of
self-enrichment
at
the expense of the public investors in Halliburton.
This was the economic and scandal-stained backdrop to the
midterm campaign.
So, what happened? The public said, "Sure, the economy
doesn't
look good, but we're not stupid. The economy's sagging, but you can't
blame
the whole of the '90s on George Bush. Gives us till 2004, and we'll
tell
you
what we think then."
The problem is, the Democrats have no credibility because
they
haven't earned any. No one believes they have an economic strategy,
and as
we hunker down amidst the rubble of the bubble, we can ask, what were
the
Democrats doing as that same '90s bubble swelled? Led by Senator Joe
Lieberman they destroyed the regulatory apparatus put in place in the
'30s,
after the '20s bubble, and burst into ecstatic applause every time the
federal watchdog of the markets, Alan Greenspan, ambled along to the
Hill
to
tell everyone what a fine job he'd been doing.
On top of all that, we've had the war whoop against Saddam
Hussein. It has not been popular. A majority of Americans appear to
believe
that it's not a particularly good idea to trash Iraq, even though it
would
be fun to see Saddam Hussein swinging from a lamppost. Aside from Tony
Blair, the world is against it. Closer to home, the Joint Chiefs are
against
it.
All the same, the whooping worked. It changed the subject
from
the economy and Harken and Halliburton. It got the Democrats rearing
and
plunging till Gephardt panicked and rushed to the White House to
enlist in
the great Crusade. My bet is now that the war fever will subside, not
least
because George Bush can count yet another triumph after his brave
assists
to
President-elect Lula in Brazil and Gerhard Schroeder in Germany. His
warmongering has handed the Islamic Party a great victory in Turkey.
The Democrats are a party of ghosts and revenants, not the
most
convincing battalion to put against the party of property and oil, of
fundamentalist Christians now in coalition with warmongering Jewish
neocons,
which is, of course, the big political story of the season.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of
the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander
Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit
the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
