Despite a big rebound in hiring in the last few months, President Bush has been unable to translate the economic improvement into political benefit, leaving Republicans increasingly anxious that the White House might let slip away its best chance to counter the bad news from Iraq.
The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months — a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Mr. Bush's favor — has been largely crowded out of the electorate's psyche by images from Iraq of the abuse of prisoners and the deaths of American troops, said Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists.
But even as the statistics give the administration more opportunities to assert that Mr. Bush's tax cuts have stimulated the economy, some Republicans said the White House's decision so far not to put forward any big new economic ideas had made it harder for the president and his party to capture public attention and convince voters that Mr. Bush is deeply engaged in the pocketbook issues of most concern to them.
"The reason the White House is on the defensive right now is that they haven't put forward an active agenda that's based on an overview of what the economy's status is and what needs to be done to take it to a higher level," said Kevin A. Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization.
Some Republicans said they would like to see a greater emphasis on economic gains in the Bush campaign's advertising. But they said
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/politics/campaign/22ECON.html?hp
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