It's probably safe to say that nobody is ever going to write a book on leadership using George W. Bush as a positive example. But that's not the way he sees it:
...[A]s he spends his last months in office trying to avert a global economic collapse, Mr. Bush has been telling people privately that it’s a good thing he’s in charge.
“He said that if it was going to happen at all, he was glad it was happening under his presidency, because he had a good group of people in D.C. working for him,” Dru Van Steenberg, one of several small-business owners who met with Mr. Bush in San Antonio earlier this week. The president expressed the same sentiment, others said, during a similar private session in Chantilly, Va., the next day.
“He said that whoever was going to take over in January was going to have a huge crisis on their hands the day they come into office,” Ms. Van Steenberg added. “He thought by this happening now, that perhaps everyone could see signs of improvement before the next president comes into office.”
Others see it differently:
President Bush peeked out the window of the Oval Office yesterday morning at the crowd awaiting him in the Rose Garden, then went back to pacing. He had little reason to be enthusiastic about the task at hand.
It was the 20th time in recent days that he had tried to calm the markets, according to a CBS News tally. The previous 19 times, the market ignored him and continued its downward plunge. And this time would be no different.
A few minutes before he walked into the Rose Garden to say that "the American people can be confident in our economic future," the Dow Jones industrials were trading as high as 8530. A few minutes after his speech, the index was at 8224.
His chore of reassuring the markets thus completed, Bush turned to more pleasant tasks. He hopped on Air Force One and flew down to Florida for the first of the day's two fundraisers. He had some urgent work to do on the Republican Party's liquidity crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment