WASHINGTON: President George Bush, battling a slump in his poll ratings, expressed frustration on Friday that bad news from Iraq is drowning out what he called good news on the US economy.
In an interview with the financial news network CNBC, Mr Bush said he had ‘been spending a lot of time on the economy’ in his public pronouncements, to little avail.
“The problem is that we’re in war, and sometimes it’s hard for people to get a positive message about the economy when they’re troubled by ... scenes of violence on the TV screens,” the president said.
Mr Bush said news that the US economy created 138,000 new jobs last month, while much less than expected on Wall Street, ‘is an indication that this economy’s still strong’.
But that economic strength has not translated into political capital for Mr Bush, despite a noticeable increase in the number of public appearances by the president in recent weeks to trumpet healthy growth figures.
The most recent poll by USA Today/Gallup this week found that Mr Bush’s approval ratings had hit a new low, just six months before elections in which his Republican Party is battling to maintain control of Congress.
Mr Bush’s overall approval rating has plunged to 34 per cent from 43 per cent at the beginning of the year, according to the poll. The president also received his lowest marks ever on the economy — 34 per cent approval.
Mr Bush said he recognised public anxiety about soaring oil prices and ‘a kind of a dread of competition out there’ from the rest of the world.
“And so the numbers have been good, and the facts are good, but ... I think it’s wise to recognise there are some troubling aspects of today’s society, which may make it more difficult for me to get my message through,” Mr Bush said.
“But I am still going to talk the facts, the facts are stubborn things, and the American people have got to know that this economy is strong and we’ve got a plan to keep it strong.”
Much of the president’s lower ratings on the economy have come about as US drivers feel the pain from ever-higher fuel prices, caused for the large part by a record-breaking run in global crude prices.
Another factor making petrol more expensive is a US government requirement this year for refineries supplying fuel to replace the additive MTBE, which is a recognised health risk, with ethanol.
Mr Bush said the change ‘wasn’t a mistake, but there’s some validity to recognising there was supply disruption because of (the) switch from MTBE to ethanol’.
But, he added: “There’s a lot of reasons why the price of gasoline (petrol) is going up”, and reaffirmed calls for Congress to permit oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as one way to bring down prices.
Mr Bush said he also supported eliminating a tariff on ethanol imposed on imports from major producers such as Brazil.
On another difficulty now mounting with Congress, Mr Bush said he would ‘absolutely’ use his presidential veto for the first time to reject a 109-billion-dollar emergency spending bill.
“The (House of Representatives) Speaker and the leader of the Senate want to work with the president, to be fiscally responsible, but here’s the problem in terms of kind of the numbers that people see right now,” he said.
Mr Bush added, however, that ‘we’re at war, and I will spend what it takes to win the war and support our troops’.—AFP
