David Sanger is unhappy with George W. Bush:
Posted by DeLong at September 2, 2003 09:04 PM | TrackBackBush Defends Tax Cuts and Announces Jobs Post: Since the last time President Bush addressed a Labor Day picnic — with carpenters in Pennsylvania — the economy has lost 700,000 jobs, most of them in manufacturing.... "Things are getting better," Mr. Bush told a subdued crowd here. Orders for goods are coming back to the country's factories, the president said, and productivity is on the rise -- though he acknowledged that was one reason jobs were disappearing. "The economy is beginning to grow," he said, "and that's what I'm interested in. I believe there are better days ahead."
Skipping past all his talk during the last campaign and since then about reducing government regulation, he promised reliability rules for electric power companies and continued crackdowns on corporate executives who cheat the system.... Mr. Bush's only new announcement today, the traditional start of campaign season in election years, was the creation of an assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing, a step clearly intended to reinforce his commitment to bringing back blue-collar jobs.
Yet the creation of the position is the kind of action that Republicans, when they were out of office, used to criticize...
Lip service and window dressing. Bush will not actually change his policies at all.
Posted by: Chuck Nolan on September 3, 2003 05:03 AMMy views do not depend on who is in office. See http://www.techcentralstation.com/090303B.html
Posted by: Arnold Kling on September 3, 2003 05:29 AMBush no more speaks honestly about the economy than he does about anything else, including foreign policy and the war on terrorism. By the way, is anyone disturbed that the president of the U.S. thought it appropriate to wear in a staged ceremony a military uniform. One of the strong ideals of American government has been the dominance of civilian authority over the military, although heaven knows the system really doesn't work this way. Nonetheless, to have a president actually dress up as a military personage (and have an action figure in such garb) is powerfully disturbing, although perhaps it accurately tells us and the world what U.S. democracy really is all about.
Posted by: David on September 3, 2003 06:03 AMReading the exerpt on this blog, the NYT article and the link by Arnold Kling reminds me how much editing the press does in reporting President Bush. The Bush quote Arnold posts on his link is an incomprehensible muddle. The NYT article quotes Mr. Bush's short but comprehensible cheerleading statements ("Things are getting better..." "the economy is starting to grow"). The explanations of his policy are written outside the quotations because quoting Mr. Bush would confuse the most accomplished reader. From reading the Times article, one might assume that Mr. Bush is much more informed and erudite than is indicated by his actual words.
BTW- "the economy is starting to grow" is a misleading statement. The economy has been growing since November 2001, just at a slow pace. A mystery with Mr. Bush is whether such statements are due to his poor communication skills or whether he truly does not understand the fundamentals and the nuances of his policies. The press gives the president the benefit of the doubt. Some ex-insiders portray a different picture of a weak president with a poor grasp of policy nuances.
This is the first MBA president. However, business schools are notorious for producing CEOs that understand how to structure a business, but lack crucial understanding of the technical issues. Many tech companies operate on a different model that promotes engineers from within and teaches them business skills. Yes, the pointy hair CEO in Dilbert is a caricature, but people like him exist. The appointment of an assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing is a typical MBA solution for a CEO that does not understand the technical details. That solution is to insert a layer of management between the CEO and the technical group with the hope that the new assistant can 1) understand the technical issues. 2) effectively communicate the solutions to the CEO. This model can be effective, but it fails if the CEO chooses a manager too much like himself that is good at communication but lacking in technical understanding. If Mr. Bush understood manufacturing better, he would have realized that steel tariffs would hurt domestic manufacturing by increasing the costs of their inputs (steel). Faced with a deteriorating bottom line, will the stockholders stage a revolt?
Posted by: bakho on September 3, 2003 06:40 AM