WASHINGTON — With the economy in full roller coaster mode, President Bush has been working overtime to convince the nation that the situation is under control.
Hardly a day has passed this month without Mr. Bush appearing in the Rose Garden, or meeting with business leaders, or convening his cabinet, or giving a speech, as he did at the United States Chamber of Commerce on Friday, to talk about the “systematic and aggressive measures” his government has taken to put the fragile economy back on track.
The headlines on the White House Web site all sound the same: “President Bush visits Ada, Mich., Discusses Economy,” or “President Bush Meets with G7 Finance Ministers to Discuss World Economy” or simply, “President Bush Discusses Economy.” On Saturday, there will be another, when Mr. Bush has the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, to Camp David.
It is, in short, an intensive public relations effort, designed, White House officials say, to keep Mr. Bush front-and-center in explaining the intricacies of a complicated and fast-moving financial crisis. At times, the president sounds like an economics professor, with his talk of interest rates and capital and tightening of credit.
“Let me explain this approach piece by piece,” he said Friday.
But while Mr. Bush is doing plenty of talking, Americans do not appear to be taking much reassurance from his words.
The sheer volatility of the markets suggests that investors remain unconvinced when he says, as he did on Friday, that the government’s bank rescue plan is “big enough and bold enough to work.” On Wednesday, hours after Mr. Bush said he was ‘’confident in the long run this economy will come back,” the Dow Jones average plunged 700 points. Nine in 10 people now say the country is on the wrong track.
“One of the things we’re seeing here is the perils of a weakened presidency,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. “If the president were very strong and had a high approval rating, he would be the guy to reassure America right now. He’s unfortunately not in a position to do that, and we’re finding that we pay a price for that as a country.”
In the earliest days of the crisis, Mr. Bush seemed to cede his platform to his treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., only to face criticism that the president seemed disengaged. Once his administration settled on a plan — a $700 billion rescue package, which has since been eclipsed by a new plan for the government to take a stake in the nation’s banks — Mr. Bush delivered a prime-time televised address to sell Congress on the idea.
More than 52 million households tuned in, a respectable number by any standard. About the same number watched the first presidential debate this fall. Yet now that the White House has changed tactics, with Mr. Bush delivering remarks on the economy nearly every day, analysts and historians see Mr. Bush struggling to command the nation’s attention.
“I think he’s trying to make himself useful but I don’t think he’s having much of an impact,” said Alan Brinkley, a historian at Columbia University. “It would be strange in this kind of crisis if the president was invisible, but on the other hand, I don’t think his visibility is what’s shaping these events.”
Still, Mr. Bush gets credit in some quarters for trying. “I think he’s been wise to continue speaking out on a daily basis, because it shows him engaged, and in the early days of this financial crisis it was almost like he was an ethereal creature floating above it, as if Paulson and Bernanke were running the government,” said David Gergen, who has advised presidents including Ronald Reagan, Gerald R. Ford and Bill Clinton. “So I think he’s been wise to speak, but I don’t think many people have been listening.”
Americans have always looked to their presidents to provide comfort in times of crisis, especially through wars and economic turmoil. Franklin D. Roosevelt was brilliant at it. “He understood that the radio was an extraordinary vehicle for reaching millions of Americans, making them feel that the president was on their side,” the historian Robert Dallek said.
And Mr. Bush has used his presidential platform to great effect. One of the most lasting images of his administration will be that of the new president, standing amid the rubble of the ruined World Trade Center just days after Sept. 11, 2001, shouting spontaneously into a megaphone: “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
But now, with fewer than 100 days left in office, Mr. Bush’s megaphone, both figuratively and literally, has disappeared. The nation often seems to have moved past Mr. Bush; people frequently seem more interested in what the presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, have to say. And with a situation as volatile as the current economic crisis, scholars say, it might be difficult for any president to make the public feel better — let alone a lame duck president whose approval ratings were already as dismal as Mr. Bush’s.
“Presidents can rarely move public opinion,” said George C. Edwards III, a political scientist at Texas A & M University who wrote ‘On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit,’ published in 2003 by Yale University Press. Even Roosevelt faced obstacles; Mr. Edwards says a substantial number of Americans never listened to the fireside chats.
Aides to Mr. Bush say he understands the challenge. Just as he knew, during the darkest days of the war in Iraq, that the mood of Americans would not improve until they saw fewer fatalities and less violence, he knows that the nation will not be convinced his economic rescue package will be successful until people see the stock markets stabilize and credit markets loosen up.
“Look at the language he uses,” said Kevin Sullivan, Mr. Bush’s communications director. “It’s very realistic. He uses the word crisis; he talks about their anxiety, their concerns. There’s no rose-colored glasses, but by explaining how it’s going to work, that it’s not going to happen overnight, he hopes that people are going to be reassured.”
So the daily drumbeat continues. On Monday, Mr. Bush heads to Alexandria, La., to meet with business leaders and talk about — what else? — the economy.
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