Booming Economy Gives Primaries a Shade of Gray

The New Hampshire primary falls, this year, on the day marking the longest economic expansion in U.S. history — and that boom has been making it hard for the candidates to differentiate themselves from one another. Although Tuesday's vote may produce close races in both parties as Governor George W. Bush reins in Senator John McCain's lead among GOP voters and Bill Bradley makes up ground against the vice president among Democrats, the presidential race thus far has been most notable for its lack of burning policy questions. Character, we're told, will be decisive; "authenticity" is much in demand. Looking back at the New Hampshire campaign, there's something telling about the prominence of the abortion issue in almost Monty Pythonesque debates on both sides: Republican candidates appeared to be debating over how much they hate abortion; Democrats quibbled over who was more pro-choice and who got there first. Oh, for the days when a candidate could chant "It's the economy, stupid" as a mantra.

Of course, the candidates don't avoid talking about the economy: Al Gore does his best to bask at every turn in its warm glow, as if the boom were an achievement of the Clinton administration; while George W. Bush, for his part, uses it to sell his own supply-side tax cuts by claiming the expansion as a product of Reagan-era tax policies. But economies expand and contract according to their own rules — yes, folks, even Alan Greenspan himself would tell you that his job is closer to that of a janitor than of an architect — and aren't easily swayed to the whims of politicians. Although most candidates are quite happy to discuss how to spend the budget surpluses that will, at least according to the more optimistic accountants, be generated by the boom, the spoilsport questions of what to do when the party ends simply aren't on the table in this election cycle. Yet most economic textbooks confirm that the economy runs in cycles and that even the most brilliant silver lining is attached, somewhere, to a cloud. After all, it's not a cornucopia; it's an economy, stupid.