The first hint that President Bush might be detached from the nation’s economic woes was in February, when he conceded that he had not heard about predictions of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
Then Mr. Bush went to Wall Street to warn against “massive government intervention in the housing markets,” two days before his administration helped broker the takeover of the investment bank Bear Stearns.
Now Mr. Bush is in Eastern Europe, one of eight foreign trips he is taking this year. As he delivered his farewell address to NATO on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans were holed up in the Capitol, scrambling to produce a bill to help struggling homeowners, the kind of government intervention Mr. Bush had cautioned against.
For a man who came into office as the nation’s first M.B.A. president, Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch. As the economy eclipses Iraq as the top issue on voters’ minds, even some Republican allies of the president say Mr. Bush is being eclipsed and is in danger of looking out of touch.
He’s over there arguing about who should get into NATO, and the American people are focused on what’s in their pocketbooks,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan in his second term. “He has talked about the economy, but it is not viewed as being a satisfactory response. Unfortunately, the lasting image is of not knowing of $4-a-gallon gas.”
With the nation riveted by the race to succeed Mr. Bush, it is growing increasingly difficult for him to command the national stage. In addition to being upstaged by the candidates, Mr. Bush has ceded his bully pulpit on the economy to other Washington figures, including Congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
While Mr. Bush was in Romania on Wednesday, Mr. Bernanke was on Capitol Hill delivering a far more pessimistic vision of the economy than the president — who has said the country faces “a rough patch” — has allowed.
When the White House announced its plan to overhaul the financial regulatory system, it was Mr. Paulson, not Mr. Bush, who did the talking. And the Paulson plan, by the secretary’s own account, is not aimed at offering immediate assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure.
I think for the most part the administration is doing the right thing in addressing the economic problems we have,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York. “But I think tactically it would be better if the president himself was more out front, rather than leaving it so much to Paulson. When there is a perceived national crisis, it’s important for the president to be the point man.”
Still, because the public has little faith in Mr. Bush, it may be tough for him to be the point man on the economy, even with a Harvard business degree. Just 25 percent of the public approves of the way Mr. Bush is handling the economy, a figure even lower than his overall job approval rating, a CBS News Poll in mid-March found.
So it is no wonder, some Republicans say, that Mr. Bush is letting others do the talking.
The good news for Bush is he’s got Paulson, who’s got some real credibility on these issues,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist. “Paulson is doing a pretty good job of looking like he’s doing something.”
Other presidents have tried, with varying degrees of success, to use their platforms in tough economic times. Franklin D. Roosevelt famously used his fireside chats to calm a nation traumatized by the Great Depression. But Gerald R. Ford was ridiculed for his WIN buttons (Whip Inflation Now), as was Jimmy Carter, with his call to set thermostats at 68 degrees.
Mr. Bush, by contrast, has been loath to sound downbeat. He has yet to use the word “recession,” for instance. Two months ago, he drew praise for bringing together Republicans and Democrats on an economic stimulus package including rebates for taxpayers. (The checks will go out in May.)
But he has resisted calls from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to hold a top-level bipartisan economic meeting to address the growing mortgage crisis.
That may be for philosophical reasons. As he said on Wall Street, Mr. Bush is not a fan of a government bailout for those who took risks in the marketplace.
Even so, with Congress trying to come together around some kind of plan, James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, says Mr. Bush should take the lead.
He has the chance to show that he’s bipartisan and he can be above it all and solve things,” Mr. Thurber said. “The American people want a leader right now.”
White House officials fiercely reject the contention that Mr. Bush is not showing leadership, or is out of touch. They say he has been unfairly treated for his $4-a-gallon gasoline comment. The average price was nowhere near $4 when Mr. Bush was asked the question, though the predictions were all over the news. (The national average is $3.29, the Energy Department says.) The White House officials also note that in August Mr. Bush announced a package of proposals intended to help low-income homeowners that the Democratic Congress has yet to adopt fully.
He is very much in touch with the economy,” said Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary. “He is out in the country a lot. He is talking about the economy very, very regularly.”
While Mr. Bush may be talking, Americans do not seem to be listening. When the president visited a debt counseling center on Friday in Freehold, N.J., it did not generate major headlines. But the papers were awash with the news that Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania had endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.
Some Republicans say that will not change, no matter what Mr. Bush says or does; the public’s views are so entrenched, they argue, that Mr. Bush would be faulted even if he took a more aggressive stance. Mr. Duberstein, the former Reagan chief of staff, says Mr. Bush must try.
“He has to get back in the public conversation again,” Mr. Duberstein said. “All the conversation going on now is Obama, Clinton and McCain, and people are not talking about: ‘What’s George Bush thinking? What’s George Bush going to do?’ ”
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