History > 2008 > USA > Politics > President George W. Bush (III)

US President George Bush tears up

during a ceremony to present the Medal of Honor posthumously

to Navy Seal Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, in the White House.

Monsoor died in 2006 after diving on to a grenade

during an attack on his combat team's sniper nest in Ramadi, Iraq

Date : Tuesday 8 April 2008

Reuters/U.S. Navy - Brian Aho/Handout

The Independent        Seven Days

Acknowledging Tough Times,

Bush Presses Congress to Act

April 30, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
and ANAHAD O’CONNOR

WASHINGTON — Perhaps anticipating further gloomy economic news before the weekend, President Bush acknowledged Tuesday that the country is going through hard times, and in so doing he sought to put pressure on the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass his economic proposals.

Asked at a Rose Garden news conference if he was concerned that a report about the nation’s gross domestic product might indicate the nation is in a recession, the president said, “I think they’ll show that we’re — it’s a very slow economy. I can’t guess what the number will be, and I haven’t been shown, truly.”

Wednesday’s G.D.P. report is expected to show weak economic growth. The government will also report on the nation’s employment situation on Friday, and Wall Street analysts are projecting that the economy lost jobs in April.

Pressed again on whether the United States might be in a recession, Mr. Bush replied: “You know, the average person doesn’t really care what we call it. The average person wants to know whether or not we know that they’re paying higher gasoline prices, and that they’re worried about staying in their homes, and I do understand that.”

Pledging that his administration would still “reach out to Congress,” he said the lawmakers should do their part “by sending me sensible and effective bills that I can sign instead of just issuing or sending, you know, bills that simply look like political statements.”

He called on Congress to pass broad new measures to expand energy production, stem the mortgage crisis and reduce what he called lavish subsidies to farmers.

Time and again, President Bush said in his opening remarks and in answers to reporters’ questions, he has urged members of Congress to deal with rising energy prices, tougher access to student loans and the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry.

“On all these issues, the American people are looking to their leaders to come together and act responsibly,” he said. “I don’t think this is too much to ask even in an election year.”

In declining to embrace the word “recession,” Mr. Bush said that many Americans were just beginning to receive their tax rebate checks as part of an $168 billion stimulus program, and that it would be some time before the effects of those checks on the economy were clear.

As for rising energy prices, including the eye-popping cost of filling up the gasoline tank, Mr. Bush said that “if there was a magic wand to wave, I’d be waving it, of course.”

Once again, he chided Congress for not approving exploration for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he said could be done in an environmentally safe way, and for not sharing his belief in “clean, safe nuclear power.”

Moments after the president spoke, a group of Democrats shot back in a news conference on Capitol Hill, calling the president out of touch and saying he continues to block their proposals while offering impractical solutions. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York led the charge, mocking the president’s assertion that he was open to working with Congress, and listing several proposals that the Bush administration shot down.

“The truth is that the president has closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears as these crises have grown,” he said. “Until very recently, we heard the president say ‘Don’t worry, be happy, everything is going to be just fine.’ Now all of a sudden he’s realizing the problems, and yet the president and the White House have repeatedly ignored repeated shots across the bow of our economy.”

Mr. Bush laid out a litany of complaints against Congress, as he has done often in his final year as president, and said he had suggested a number of solutions that were repeatedly shot down. As gas prices have soared in the past year — as much as $4 a gallon in some parts of the country after rising as much as $1.40 per gallon on average since last year — the Bush administration has called on Congress to allow increased oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the construction of new oil refineries on abandoned military bases. These proposals, Mr. Bush said, would enable the United States to produce as much as 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel a day.

“Many of the people in Congress who complain about high energy costs support legislation that would make energy even more expensive,” he said. These members of Congress, he said, want to impose “new and costly mandates on producers, and demand dramatic emissions restrictions that would shut down coal plants.”

Mr. Bush pinned the problem of rising food prices largely on Congress, saying it was considering a “massive, bloated” farm bill that would fail to eliminate subsidy payments to “multimillionaire” farmers. With the nation’s farm economy thriving, the president argued, it is time for Congress to reduce lavish farm subsidies that translate to higher taxes for average Americans.

The president said he had also urged Congress to pass legislation that would help address problems in the housing market by modernizing the Federal Housing Administration, revamping the home lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and allowing state housing agencies to issue tax free bonds to refinance subprime loans.

“Yet they failed to send a single one of these proposals to my desk,” he said. “Americans should not have to wait any longer for their elected officials to help more families stay in their homes.”

In his remarks on Capitol Hill, Mr. Schumer took particular issue with Mr. Bush’s characterization of the energy crisis, saying that the president’s proposed solution of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would reduce the price of oil by a single penny in 20 years. During that time, Mr. Schumer said, Americans would continue to pay higher gasoline prices at the pump, while profits for oil companies would soar.

“We have a comprehensive plan that would bring oil prices down in both the short and long run,” he said.

“While the president is standing idly by, proposing irrelevant solutions to a national and international crisis,” he added, “Shell and BP announced record profits for the first quarter in 2008. Whose side is the president on?”

In the Rose Garden, President Bush declined to say whether he favors a suspension of the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal tax on gasoline, which Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain favor and Barack Obama does not.

To get into that subject would be to get dragged into the 2008 presidential race, the president said to a questioner, “and I can understand why you would want to do that.”

But when he was asked what should be high on the next president’s list, Mr. Bush replied: “I don’t think John McCain is going to neglect the war on terror. And I do think he’ll be the president. Here I am interjecting myself in the ’08 campaign, just like I told you I wouldn’t. That’s unfair, isn’t it?”
 

David Stout reported from Washington, and Anahad O’Connor from New York.

Acknowledging Tough Times, Bush Presses Congress to Act, NYT, 30.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/washington/29cnd-Bush.html

Bush Announces HUD Pick

April 19, 2008
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON — President Bush has chosen Steve Preston, the head of the Small Business Administration, as his nominee to become the nation’s new housing secretary, a senior administration official said.

Mr. Preston, 47, would succeed Alphonso R. Jackson, who resigned in the midst of a federal investigation into whether he steered lucrative housing contracts in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands to friends.

The announcement, expected on Friday, comes as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the nation’s sprawling public housing stock, is struggling to help stanch the flood of foreclosures across the country.

The Bush administration is counting on the Federal Housing Administration, the branch of HUD that insures mortgages, to protect hundreds of thousands of troubled homeowners from the risk of foreclosure by helping them refinance shaky subprime loans, making them stable government-backed mortgages.

F.H.A. has been sharply criticized by Democratic lawmakers, who charge that the agency has not done enough to ease the nation’s housing crisis. This month, the Bush administration proposed loosening eligibility rules for people hoping to refinance mortgages insured by the federal government to ensure that more homeowners will receive assistance.

Officials said that Mr. Preston would be well positioned to handle the housing crisis, given his experience in government and in the private sector. Mr. Bush is expected to announce his nomination this afternoon in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

“He has a strong financial background and understands the important role the housing market plays in our economy,” said the senior administration, who discussed Mr. Preston’s nomination on condition of anonymity.

Before being named S.B.A. administrator in 2006, Mr. Preston served as executive vice president of the ServiceMaster Company, a multibillion-dollar corporation whose businesses include TruGreen ChemLawn, a lawn care company, and Terminix, a pest control company.

As S.B.A. administrator, he was responsible for revamping the government’s Disaster Assistance Program, which was still reeling from the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 when he arrived. He was also responsible for supporting the nation’s small businesses with an $80 billion portfolio of direct and guaranteed business loans, venture capital investments and disaster loans.

Earlier this year, Mr. Preston was sharply criticized when Democrats in Congress learned that his agency had given a $1.2 million contract to a former Bush administration official who lacked experience in helping small businesses compete for government contracts.

The contract went to the VBP Group, a company based in Paradise Valley, Ariz. The company’s owner, Vernon B. Parker, served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Agriculture Department from April 2003 to January 2006.

Mr. Preston called on the agency’s inspector general to investigate.

“Based on the information provided by your staff, and some research conducted by my staff, I believe there is sufficient cause for concern over the events surrounding this contractor,” Mr. Preston wrote to Nydia Velázquez, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the committee.

Mr. Jackson, 64, prided himself on working to keep vulnerable families in their homes, to revitalize public housing and to preserve affordable housing as head of the $37 billion housing department.

But Mr. Jackson began stirring controversy soon after he was named housing secretary.

In 2004, less than two months after his confirmation, Mr. Jackson told a House panel that he believed poverty “is a state of mind, not a condition,” provoking strong criticism. Two years later, he said in a speech that he had canceled a contract for a company after its president told him that he did not like Mr. Bush. Mr. Jackson later said he had made the story up.

In March, Mr. Jackson took a pounding from senators who demanded that he respond to accusations that he had steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to friends for work at the Virgin Islands housing authority and reconstruction in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Senior Democrats called on him to resign.

One of Mr. Jackson’s friends, Noel Khalil, an Atlanta developer, received a $127 million contract last year as part of a joint venture to rebuild a New Orleans public housing project. Mr. Khalil’s company, Columbia Residential, has paid Mr. Jackson more than $250,000 in fees since Mr. Jackson joined the Bush administration in 2001, for work done before Mr. Jackson joined government, the developer’s lawyer said.

Mr. Jackson listed only one payment — of $35,000 — from Columbia Residential in the financial disclosure forms he filed for 2001 to 2006. Mr. Khalil’s lawyer, Buddy Parker, said that his client is being viewed as a witness, not a target of the federal investigation.

Mr. Jackson has declined to comment on the inquiry, saying only that he was leaving office to “attend more diligently to personal and family matters.”

    Bush Announces HUD Pick, NYT, 19.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/washington/19hudcnd.html

Bush Welcomes Pope to White House

April 17, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — With a blend of the religious and secular, a fife and drum band and a soprano singing the Lord’s Prayer, President Bush welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to the White House Wednesday morning, telling the pontiff that Americans “need your message that all of life is sacred.”

More than 9,000 people, including senators and other Washington celebrities, crowded the South Lawn for the historic arrival ceremony, conducted under clear, cloudless skies.

The 81-year-old pontiff, who celebrates his birthday on Wednesday, was greeted by the peal of trumpets and a 21-gun salute, and treated to rendition of Happy Birthday by the crowd. He called for ‘’support for the patient efforts of international diplomacy to resolve conflicts and promote progress” around the world.

It was Benedict’s first time in the United States since he ascended to the papacy, and only the second time the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics has visited the White House. The first was in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president.

Dressed in his traditional white cassock and skullcap, the pontiff delivered a message celebrating the greatness of American democracy, as well as the nation’s embrace of religion. His speech was laden with references to American history, including the struggle against slavery, the civil rights movement and George Washington.

“I come as a friend, a preacher of the Gospel and one with great respect for this vast pluralistic society,” the pontiff said, adding, “Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth.”

Mr. Bush, who has made his own Christian faith a central tenet of his life as an American politician and who has assiduously courted religious conservatives during his tenure as president, used his speech to affirm the role that faith plays in American society.

“Here in America you’ll find a nation that welcomes the role of faith in the public square,” the president said. “When our founders declared our nation’s independence, they rested their case on an appeal to the ‘laws of nature, and of nature’s God.’ We believe in religious liberty. We also believe that a love for freedom and a common moral law are written into every human heart, and that these constitute the firm foundation on which any successful free society must be built.”

There was no mention of the war in Iraq — an issue on which the two disagree — or any explicit discussion controversial issues like abortion, embryonic stem cell research, on which the two agree.

But Mr. Bush did get applause when, in an obvious reference to those issues, he said, “In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred.” And the president adopted a phrase the pope himself has used when he said the nation needs the pontiff’s “message to reject this dictatorship of relativism.”

The ceremony was among the most elaborate the White House has ever conducted, even more so than the one last year honoring the queen of England. The opera singer Kathleen Battle sang The Lord’s Prayer, her clear voice pealing out in the soft spring air. When it was over, the announcer declared, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please join us in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the Holy Father.”

The crowd obliged.

    Bush Welcomes Pope to White House, NYT, 17.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-pope.html?hp

Bush paid $221,635 in 2007 federal tax: White House

Fri Apr 11, 2008
4:43pm EDT
Reuters

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush reported taxable income of $719,274 for 2007 and paid $221,635 in federal income tax, the White House said on Friday.

Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, earned more than three times as much, reporting taxable income of $2,528,066 while paying $602,651 in federal income taxes, forms released by the White House showed.

The president's income included his salary as president, listed as $397,839, and income from trusts in which his assets are held. The first lady received a $150,000 advance for a children's book she co-authored with daughter Jenna, the White House said.

Mrs. Bush donated her net proceeds from the advance to Teach for America and the New Teacher's Project. President and Mrs. Bush contributed $165,660 to churches and charitable organizations, including the Volunteer Fire Department in Crawford, Texas.

The Cheneys income included $292,208 in salary, $75,420 in taxable interest, $654,730 in ordinary dividends, business income of $180,976, $1,418,428 in capital gains and $430,276 in other income.

Both the Bushes and the Cheneys had a big tax bill at the end of the year. The Bushes had to pay $17,741, while the Cheneys had to send in a check for $136,486.

The release of the president's and vice president's tax forms came as Bush spent the weekend at his Crawford ranch with his parents, brother Jeb and other family members.
 

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Lori Santos and Eric Beech)

    Bush paid $221,635 in 2007 federal tax: White House, R, 11.4.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1120215120080411

Bush Signals No Further Reduction of Troops in Iraq

April 11, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Thursday that the senior United States commander in Iraq could “have all the time he needs” before reducing American forces there any further, but he promised shorter tours for troops and longer breaks for them at home.

Democrats responded by saying that no end was in sight to the American troop commitment.

Mr. Bush defended the costs of the war, in lives and money, declaring that his decision to order more troops to Iraq last year had averted potential defeat there and that withdrawing would be catastrophic to American interests. Speaking at the White House to a small audience that included Vice President Dick Cheney, the secretaries of State and Defense and representatives of veterans’ organizations, he signaled that an American force nearly as large as at any other point in the last five years would remain in Iraq through his presidency. He left any significant changes in policy to the next president.

“Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq,” he said, sounding a triumphant note about his decision last year to send 30,000 additional troops. “Today, thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success.”

As was the case during two days of Congressional testimony this week by the American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the Democratic presidential candidates offered assessments that diverged sharply from Mr. Bush’s. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said the president “refuses to face the reality that we are confronted by in Iraq.”

“It’s time for the president to answer the question being asked of him,” she said while campaigning in Pittsburgh. “In the wake of the failed objectives that were laid out to be met by the surge, what is the exit strategy in Iraq?”

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois echoed her comments. “We have a blank check strategy in Iraq that is overstretching our military, distracting us from the other challenges we face, burdening our economy and failing to pressure the Iraqi government to take responsibility for their future,” he said in a statement.

With only nine months left in his presidency, Mr. Bush has begun making the case for a war that will continue, one way or another, under another commander in chief. He flatly restated his views on the war that will most define his legacy, and set the terms of the debate over Iraq for the coming presidential election.

“Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: Al Qaeda and Iran,” Mr. Bush said.

“If we fail there, Al Qaeda would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions, and they could gain safe havens in Iraq from which to attack the United States, our friends and our allies,” he said. “Iran would work to fill the vacuum in Iraq, and our failure would embolden its radical leaders and fuel their ambitions to dominate the region.”

Mr. Bush’s focus on Iran, while not new, reflected deepening concerns in the administration and the Pentagon about suspected Iranian support for some extremists. They say that support became increasingly evident late last month during the indecisive Iraqi operation to wrest control of Basra from Shiite militias and more recently in a spate of rocket attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Iran and Al Qaeda represent different threats, though they share a common purpose: weakening the United States. Iran has supported Shiite groups — and Iraq’s government itself — to expand its influence in the region, using overt and covert means. Al Qaeda, by contrast, is a Sunni group that has no base in Iraq but that has embraced an indigenous Sunni insurgent group. In effect, in Mr. Bush’s view, the American effort in Iraq faces attacks from both sides.

Mr. Bush declared that the Iranian government had a choice: to live peacefully with Iraq or to continue arming, financing and training what he called “illegal militant groups.”

“If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq,” he said. “Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners.”

Mr. Bush sought to reassure lawmakers in both parties that Iraq was increasingly paying for reconstruction and security with its own revenues, flush now because of the high price of oil.

As expected, he announced that American troops headed to Iraq after Aug. 1 would deploy for 12 months, instead of 15. He imposed the hugely unpopular extension last year as part of the buildup in Iraq.

He also said that troops would remain at home at least a year for each year spent in the field, a requirement that many lawmakers had wanted to codify in legislation but failed to accomplish in the face of opposition by Mr. Bush and Republicans.

“I think it should not be lost on anyone that this suggestion the president is making now is long overdue and something the Republicans in Congress and the president of the United States have rejected over and over again,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Capitol Hill.

The shortened deployments were a major recommendation of the armed services and of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who worried about the strain on military readiness related to the war in Iraq.

At the same time, though, Mr. Bush endorsed General Petraeus’s recommendation to suspend any more withdrawals for at least 45 days after the departure in July of the last of the additional units ordered into Iraq last year.

At that point the United States will have just under 140,000 troops in Iraq, slightly more than were in early 2007, when sectarian violence verged on all-out civil war.

Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate panel on Thursday that they expected the level of American forces in Iraq to drop further this year if conditions on the ground improved.

“I do not anticipate this period of review to be an extended one, and I would emphasize that the hope, depending on conditions on the ground, is to reduce our presence further this fall,” Mr. Gates said.

But he acknowledged that he had abandoned a hope that American troop levels could drop to 100,000 by the end of the year.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he heard a clear contradiction in the comments by Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen — who expressed desires for a brief pause followed by further troop reductions. He contrasted that with the projections by Mr. Bush and General Petraeus, who in testimony before Congress this week spoke about no specific timetable for ending the pause.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, responded, saying, “We would encourage members not to get caught up in semantic differences between those who have testified before them because, substantively, all of the president’s top military leaders and advisers are in the same place when it comes to the way ahead in Iraq.”

But that was not sufficient explanation for Mr. Levin.

“I think there clearly is a conflict here, at least in their description of what they recommend,” Mr. Levin said after the hearing. “This is not parsing words. These are words that are very, very different, and clearly in conflict with each other.”

Admiral Mullen said the Joint Chiefs supported General Petraeus’s proposals to Mr. Bush.

“It’s not a blank check,” Admiral Mullen said. “It’s not an open-ended commitment of troops. It’s merely recognition of the fact that war is unpredictable.”

In his testimony this week, General Petraeus said he needed time to assess security in Iraq once the added brigades left; he declined, despite persistent questioning, to commit to any additional withdrawals at the end of that review period. He said any reductions would be based on conditions that he did not clearly define.

Nor did Mr. Bush in his statement. That left him vulnerable to Democratic attacks about how the United States would end its involvement in Iraq.

“General Petraeus says he’ll need time to consolidate his forces and assess how this reduced American presence will affect conditions on the ground before making measured recommendations on further reductions,” Mr. Bush said. “And I’ve told him he’ll have all the time he needs.”

With the war now in its sixth year, Mr. Bush appeared to acknowledge the criticism that no end was in sight. He said that as a democratic Iraq strengthened, Iraqi political leaders and security forces would shoulder more of the responsibility of governance and allow additional American troops to return home. He also called on neighboring Arab states to do more to support Iraq, beginning by reopening their embassies in Baghdad.

“And while this war is difficult,” he said, “it is not endless.”

Julie Bosman contributed reporting from Pittsburgh.

    Bush Signals No Further Reduction of Troops in Iraq, NYT, 11.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/washington/11prexy.html?hp

White House Memo

In Economic Drama, Bush Is Largely Offstage

April 3, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — 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?’ ”

    In Economic Drama, Bush Is Largely Offstage, NYT, 3.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/washington/03bush.html