Quotes of the Day

For weeks now, John Kerry’s heard critics tell him he needs to lay out his vision for the country before the flood of Bush-Cheney TV ads convince voters that the Senator’s real name is Francois Mitterand. Taking the advice, Kerry unveiled a plan Wednesday to cut the budget deficit by half in four years. No one noticed. With unrest in Iraq growing by the hour, reporters spent the day asking Kerry if the U.S. should “take out” Shi‘ite Ayatollah Moqtada al-Sadr or simply bring the troops home. They ignored Kerry’s repeated attempts to turn their attention back to the exciting world of fiscal discipline.

Americans are perpetually telling pollsters their number one election year concern is the economy. That’s a problem for Presidential candidates, because there are few things a commander-in-chief can do to fix a sluggish economy, and none of them are bold. When Iraqi Shi’ites are openly rebelling and Condi Rice is testifying before the 9/11 commission, Kerry’s four-point plan to reenact pay-as-you-go budget rules is not going to set the world on fire.

Kerry still had to go through the exercise, however, to prove he is not the tax-and-spend liberal the White House claims he is. Now that the primaries are over, he’s positioning himself firmly in the Bill Clinton wing of the Democratic party, where fiscal discipline matters more than big spending. Kerry even dropped some of the more costly programs he had proposed during the primaries, like universal preschool. He’s saying to voters: you can trust me with the cookie jar.

George W. Bush has to prove he’s doing something about the economy too, but the President faces a tougher challenge. He can’t propose bold action either, because Republicans believe the less government gets involved in the economy the better. Bush has already passed his biggest economic proposal — his tax cuts. All he wants to do now is make those tax cuts permanent and try to decrease the cost of doing business by limiting lawsuits and getting rid of “unnecessary” regulations and reporting requirements. None of this is as exciting as invading another country, but Bush spends a lot of his time traveling the country to hold town halls, telling voters not to worry, the economy is rebounding strongly.

To people still out of work, that’s not especially comforting. Of course, pledging to restore “pay-go” rules isn’t either. So the campaigns trade shots over sideshow issues that get attention but have little practical impact. Kerry and Bush snipe at each other about the rising cost of gas, even though Americans still pay the lowest pump prices in the world. Outsourcing dominates the headlines for months, despite the fact that the rising cost of health insurance is far more responsible for employers’ hesitation to hire new workers. In bad economic times, any presidential challenger has only one real message on the economy: The guy in the White House hasn’t done enough. The incumbent has just one retort: Yes, I have.

All of this means that national security will continue to dominate the news until November, while Bush and Kerry continue to trot out small-scale economic proposals. But how secure Americans feel in their wallets when they step up to that touch-screen voting machine will most likely decide the election. For now, the latest Pew Research Center poll finds that only 39% of voters approve of Bush’s handling of the economy, a number Bush and Kerry will both be watching for seven months. Bush’s father told business leaders at a Dallas lunch Wednesday how frustrating that experience was 12 years ago. “I was out there telling people things were getting better,” Bush said. “In politics, you have to remember, it isn’t what’s actually happening. It’s the perception that’s out there.”

• Mitch Frank
• With bombs going off in Iraq, many Americans aren't paying attention to Kerry and Bush's economic plans. But the candidates have to keep plugging them