Dole

ATLANTA — Vice President George Bush and Sen. Bob Dole, chief rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, clashed over trade policy and derided each other’s plans for reduction of the federal deficit at a presidential campaign debate here Sunday.

“I don’t think we should go down the protectionist road,” Bush declared in warning against tougher trade measures now pending in Congress at the debate staged here in Georgia to focus attention on the candidates’ views in advance of the March 8 Super Tuesday Southern primaries.

“The best answer (to the nation’s trade problems) is open markets,” Bush said, adding that he was concerned about “the inevitability of retaliation” against the United States by foreign trading partners.

But Dole, who is supporting stronger trade measures on Capitol Hill, disagreed sharply. “Every time I hear the word retaliation I am reminded that Japan and South Korea and Taiwan already block Florida oranges and Georgia peaches and Alabama melons.” Dole contended that an Alabama melon would cost about $55 in Japan because of that country’s restrictive trade practices.

‘Talking About Jobs’

“Let’s be realistic,” the Kansas lawmaker said. “We’re talking about American jobs, not protectionism.”

On the issue of the budget deficit, Dole dismissed a four-year budget spending freeze advocated by Bush as a “four-year cop-out” because the plan limits only overall spending rather than specific programs.

“He’s just going to freeze bad programs for four years and not do anything about it,” said Dole, who favors a one-year across-the-board ceiling on all spending programs, except aid for the needy. Dole contended that in four years Bush’s plan would leave the nation with a deficit of $153 billion.

But Bush disputed Dole’s figures and argued that the senator’s proposal “would cut into the muscle of defense.”

“How does your plan work?” Bush demanded of Dole.

“How does your plan work?” Dole shot back.

A Spirited Argument

Bush made his most spirited argument for his deficit plan in an exchange with New York Rep. Jack Kemp, who is vying with Pat Robertson, former religious broadcaster, to become the conservative alternative to either of the two front-runners.

Responding to Kemp’s charge that the budget freeze proposals meant that national security would be sacrificed “on the altar of mindless budgeting,” Bush said: “The freeze I’m talking about provides the President with flexibility.”

“The point is, Jack, you don’t care about deficits, you never have. You don’t think they’re important. And they are public enemy No. 1.”

“George Bush is now making my speech,” grumbled Dole, who has sought to depict himself in the campaign as the chief Republican foe of budget deficits.

Although Kemp and Bush argued about budget policy, the two were by and large in agreement in opposing changes in trade policy in contrast with Dole and Robertson. Trade has become a hot issue in the Super Tuesday Republican presidential campaign in large measure because of the impact of textile imports on the economies of South Carolina and other textile-producing states in this region.

Dole and Robertson both support trade legislation, which Bush and Kemp oppose.

‘Sounds Like Gephardt’

“Your trade talk sounds like Dick Gephardt,” Kemp told Dole at one point, referring to Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who has based much of his drive for the Democratic presidential nomination on a controversial proposal to give the United States the power to retaliate against unfair foreign trade practices.

Earlier in the debate, Robertson introduced the trade issue into the discussion. “People that I’ve talked to can’t abide the thought that America is going to be No. 2 in the world in the 21st Century,” Robertson said. Decrying the rise of textile imports from China and the Soviet Union, the former broadcaster said: “I don’t believe we can continue to permit the deindustrialization of America.

“I’m for free trade in this country but it’s got to be fair. And I think if those people don’t deal fairly with us, it’s high time we started getting tough with them. I don’t want to preside over Uncle Sucker, I want to preside over Uncle Sam.”

But Kemp promptly took issue with that argument in impassioned terms.

‘Barriers to Imports’

“If we’re going to go to Iowa, Pat and Bob,” he said, addressing Robertson and Dole, “and tell the folks in Iowa we want to boost exports of grain and corn and soybeans and then go to South Carolina, as you both have done, and tell them you’re going to put up barriers to imports, we will be making a mistake under your leadership.”

Kemp charged that such a shift in trade policy would be like “the mistake that was made in 1929 and 1930 when a Republican Congress caused the worst trade war in the history of this world with the Smoot-Hawley tariff act.”

Calling for lower tax rates on labor and capital and stable exchange rates to spur economic growth, the New York congressman warned that putting up trade barriers “is not just protectionist, it is mindless with regard to the fact that we have to compete in an export war.

“So let’s not make the mistake we made in the 1930s.”

Sunday’s debate, like the debate staged here Saturday for Democratic presidential candidates, was sponsored by the Atlanta Constitution-Journal. It brought together all of the 1988 GOP presidential contenders for the first time since the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 16.

Republican Survivors

A prior effort to assemble all the Republican survivors on one platform failed 10 days ago in Dallas when Dole and Robertson refused to participate, charging that the arrangements in Bush’s home state unfairly favored the vice president.

Since winning the New Hampshire primary, Bush has seemed relaxed and confident on the stump, bolstered not only by his victory in the Granite State but also by his financial resources and his reputedly powerful organization in most of the 14 Southern and border Super Tuesday states.

The vice president’s chief rival, Dole, won the South Dakota primary and the Minnesota caucuses last week. But Dole’s satisfaction with those successes was dimmed by evidence of discord within his campaign organization, signaled most notably by the firing of two key advisers, David Keene and Donald Devine, by campaign Chairman William Brock.

Meanwhile Robertson campaign strategists have been concerned about the potential impact on his candidacy of the disclosures of the sexual misadventures of television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

For his part, Kemp, short on money and lacking the sort of Southern base Robertson can rely on among evangelical Christians, must win the backing of hard-core conservatives to stay in the race. His first objective is to finish ahead of either Bush or Robertson in the South Carolina Republican primary next Saturday, the results of which are expected to have considerable symbolic impact on the March 8 vote.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has seized on the government shutdown as an opportunity to reshape the federal workforce and punish detractors, meeting with budget director Russ Vought on Thursday to talk through “temporary or permanent” spending cuts that could set up a lose-lose dynamic for Democratic lawmakers.

Trump announced the meeting on social media Thursday morning, saying he and Vought would determine “which of the many Democrat Agencies” would be cut — continuing their efforts to slash federal spending by threatening mass firings of workers and suggesting “irreversible” cuts to Democratic priorities.

“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump wrote on his social media account. “They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The post was notable in its explicit embrace of Project 2025, a controversial policy blueprint drafted by the Heritage Foundation that Trump distanced himself from during his reelection campaign. The effort aimed to reshape the federal government around right-wing policies, and Democrats repeatedly pointed to its goals to warn of the consequences of a second Trump administration.

Vought on Wednesday offered an opening salvo of the pressure he hoped to put on Democrats. He announced he was withholding $18 billion for the Hudson River rail tunnel and Second Avenue subway line in New York City that have been championed by both Democratic leaders, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, in their home state. Vought is also canceling $8 billion in green energy projects in states with Democratic senators.

Meanwhile, the White House is preparing for mass firings of federal workers, rather than simply furloughing as is the usual practice during a shutdown. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week that layoffs were “imminent.”

“If they don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government,” Leavitt said Thursday said of Democrats.

A starring role for Russ Vought

The bespectacled and bearded Vought has emerged as a central figure in the shutdown — promising possible layoffs of government workers that would be a show of strength by the Trump administration as well as a possible liability given the weakening job market and existing voter unhappiness over the economy.

The strategic goal is to increase the political pressure on Democratic lawmakers as agencies tasked with environmental protection, racial equity and addressing poverty, among other things, could be gutted over the course of the shutdown.

But Democratic lawmakers also see Vought as the architect of a strategy to refuse to spend congressionally approved funds, using a tool known as a “pocket rescission” in which the administration submits plans to return unspent money to Congress just before the end of the fiscal year, causing that money to lapse.

All of this means that Democratic spending priorities might be in jeopardy regardless of whether they want to keep the government open or partially closed.

Ahead of the end of the fiscal year in September, Vought used the pocket rescission to block the spending of $4.9 billion in foreign aid.

White House officials refused to speculate on the future use of pocket rescissions after rolling them out in late August. But one of Vought’s former colleagues, insisting on anonymity to discuss the budget director’s plans, said that future pocket rescissions could be 20 times higher.

Shutdown continues with no endgame in sight

Thursday was Day 2 of the shutdown, and already the dial is turned high. The aggressive approach coming from the Trump administration is what certain lawmakers and budget observers feared if Congress, which has the responsibility to pass legislation to fund government, failed to do its work and relinquished control to the White House.

Vought, in a private conference call with House GOP lawmakers Wednesday, told them of layoffs starting in the next day or two. It’s an extension of the Department of Government Efficiency work under Elon Musk that slashed through the federal government at the start of the year.

“These are all things that the Trump administration has been doing since January 20th,” said Jeffries, referring to the president’s first day in office. “The cruelty is the point.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) underscored Thursday that the shutdown gives Trump and Vought vast power over the federal government. He blamed Democrats and said “they have effectively turned off the legislative branch” and “handed it over to the president.”

Still, Johnson said that Trump and Vought take “no pleasure in this.”

Trump and the congressional leaders are not expected to meet again soon. Congress has no action scheduled Thursday in observance of the Jewish holy day, with senators due back Friday. The House is set to resume session next week.

The Democrats are holding fast to their demands to preserve health care funding and refusing to back a bill that fails to do so, warning of price spikes for millions of Americans nationwide.

The shutdown is likely to harm the economy

With no easy endgame at hand, the standoff risks dragging deeper into October, when federal workers who remain on the job will begin missing paychecks. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated roughly 750,000 federal workers would be furloughed on any given day during the shutdown, a loss of $400 million daily in wages.

The economic effects could spill over into the broader economy. Past shutdowns saw “reduced aggregate demand in the private sector for goods and services, pushing down GDP,” the CBO said.

“Stalled federal spending on goods and services led to a loss of private-sector income that further reduced demand for other goods and services in the economy,” it said. Overall CBO said there was a “dampening of economic output,” but that reversed once people returned to work.

How Trump and Vought can reshape the federal government

With Congress as a standstill, the Trump administration has taken advantage of new levers to determine how to shape the federal government.

The Trump administration can tap into funds to pay workers at the Defense Department and Homeland Security from what’s commonly called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that was signed into law this summer, according to the CBO.

That would ensure Trump’s immigration enforcement and mass deportation agenda is uninterrupted. But employees who remain on the job at many other agencies will have to wait for government to reopen before they get a paycheck.

Mascaro, Boak and Kim write for the Associated Press. AP writers Chris Megerian, Stephen Groves, Joey Cappelletti, Matt Brown, Kevin Freking, and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Connie Contreras was so excited when her daughter told her that Bob Dole was campaigning for the presidency just a block from her Redondo Beach home Wednesday that she dropped the bedcovers she was straightening, left the dirty dishes in the sink and ran all the way to Perry Park to see Dole for herself.

And she didn’t even like Dole.

But for coming to her town, Dole earned the 64-year-old Contreras’ vote.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen any politician in my life,” Contreras said, beaming. “This is so exciting for me!”

There are always political junkies who will work a presidential candidate’s phone banks, wave signs and crowd in front of TV cameras at rallies. But to excite at least some of the average, reputedly apathetic American voters, there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned stump speech. Just ask Contreras.

“Dole came to my park, where I used to take my kids!” she said. “Now that I hear him, I’m going to vote for him.”

*

To be sure, there were more than a few political die-hards among the 300 or so in attendance, the ones who wear lapel pins with their candidate’s name and rattle off their previous campaigns the way other people list their children.

Nikola M. Mikulicich Jr., a 23-year-old who graduated from Cal State Dominguez Hills at 17 and from UCLA’s Law School when he was 20, is a veteran rally-goer, having attended Bush/Quayle rallies four years ago.

Mikulicich, a self-employed lawyer, a member of the Young Republicans and the local chapter of the California Republican Assembly, said he was glad he took a few hours away from his work.

“I came to show support for Dole and the work of the local officials to clean up this area,” said Mikulicich, a Redondo Beach resident. “I think we got the message loud and clear to Dole, [Gov. Pete] Wilson and [state Atty. Gen. Dan] Lungren that we care about the work they’re doing to make our streets safer.”

The UCLA campus Democrats also made an appearance, complete with both hand-drawn and official Clinton-Gore signs.

“I’m here to make a statement, you know, that I don’t think Dole has the best solutions to the problems in this country,” said Max Von Slauson, a 23-year-old history major from San Francisco, outfitted in a sweatshirt from an Asian dance troupe performance, dark blue plaid shorts and hiking boots. “We’re moving into the 21st century, you know, and he’s, like, back in the 17th or 18th century.”

Some ralliers came to Perry Park, a neighborhood green patch with playground equipment and a baseball diamond, not in support or defiance of Dole, but to share their opinions about park policing with the presidential hopeful.

Some neighbors and local officials said they were thrilled that Dole came to acknowledge what they called the successes of a temporary restraining order that bars 28 alleged gang members from congregating in the park or participating in various other activities, legal and illegal. The city hopes to be granted a permanent injunction in June.

But those named in the order, their friends and their supporters wanted Dole to know their side of the story too.

“Dole needs to come to our community and see what’s going on for himself,” said Rachel Lujan, an 18-year-old mother and student who rocked her stroller back and forth while she spoke. “It’s a violation of the Constitution.”

Dole may not have seen Lujan’s and her friends’ signs–”Redondo Beach 1996 Not Germany,” read one–behind the banners proclaiming Dole’s name, advocating abortion rights, supporting Clinton and Gore and touting education. But it would have been hard for him to miss the smaller anti-Dole group’s boos over his supporters’ cheers.

Dotty Ertel, a 52-year-old Marina del Rey resident standing next to the teenage protesters, said she might have been at home eating breakfast if it weren’t for Dole’s appearance.

But as long as Dole was coming, Ertel said, so was she. So in stylish black leggings and smart camel-colored blazer, she waved her Clinton-Gore sign and shouted, “Four more years!” with the other rabble-rousers.

“This is my first campaign,” she said proudly. “Even if it’s a Dole rally, we have our opinion and should be heard.”

*

Most of the 140 fifth- and sixth-graders from nearby Madison Elementary School were also participating in their first campaign event. Wearing bright red T-shirts proclaiming the name of their school, the children listened to the speech from the grass next to the adults’ folding chairs. After the candidate finished, they sang a song about the Constitution.

Although they missed rehearsal for their play about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 11-year-old Kathryn said she thought hearing Dole’s speech was educational in its own right.

“He talked about gangs and making this a safe city and making this park a place where kids can play,” Kathryn said. “I thought that was right. I like to play in parks.”

Ray Comstock, 84, came to Perry Park not for Dole but for his regular Redondo Beach senior citizens meeting. Comstock said he was underwhelmed that he also caught the tail end of Dole’s speech by happenstance.

“It’s just politics is all it is,” Comstock said. “I think half of them are here just to say they’ve been here.”

WASHINGTON — The Clinton administration shelved its bid to win Senate ratification of a chemical weapons treaty Thursday after Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole set in motion an eleventh-hour groundswell of opposition that threatened to send the measure to defeat.

At President Clinton’s request, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) pulled the item from the Senate floor before it could be put to a vote. Strategists said that the White House would try to resubmit it before the election but may have to wait until next year.

The unexpected withdrawal was an embarrassment for the president, whose administration had expected earlier this year that the treaty would easily win ratification.

Clinton and Vice President Al Gore had personally telephoned crucial senators over the last few days to try to shore up support. The Senate began debate on the measure Thursday morning, but by midafternoon the floor action was all over.

The pact had been gradually losing support even before Thursday. By this week, opponents had mustered at least 25 of the 34 votes necessary to block endorsement. The Constitution requires approval of two-thirds of the Senate–or 67 senators–to ratify a treaty.

On Wednesday night, Dole sent a letter to Republican senators saying he had serious problems with the treaty. The move set off a rush of opposition, increasing the chances that it would be defeated.

In his letter, the Republican presidential candidate said the Senate should insist that the treaty “recognize and safeguard American constitutional protections against unwarranted searches.”

Republicans have been divided over the pact, which was signed by President Bush. It has received strong support from the nation’s major chemical companies, who argued that if the U.S. did not join the new regulatory system set up by the treaty, American chemical export sales–worth about $60 billion annually–would be endangered.

But Dole and other opponents had questioned whether the pact would be effective because the countries whose chemical weapons programs pose some of the biggest threats to U.S. interests–North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iraq–have not even signed on to the treaty.

Opponents also voiced doubts that it would be possible to verify compliance, because many of the most lethal chemical weapons can be manufactured in makeshift laboratories unlikely to be detected by United Nations inspectors. And they argued that the inspections called for under the treaty would be a heavy burden for smaller chemical manufacturers.

The action prompted a bitter rejoinder from Clinton campaign headquarters. James Rubin, the campaign’s foreign policy spokesman, strongly criticized Dole for a “failure of leadership” in rallying opposition against the weapons pact. He called the action “a tragedy.”

It is unclear if the White House can push the measure through before the election, but officials conceded privately that the administration probably will have to wait for the new Congress before trying again.

However, a senior administration official said that allowing the Senate to reject the treaty formally would have been even worse for U.S. prestige. “The president reached a judgment that we could not risk” the vote and he stopped the floor action, the official said.

The treaty, which has been ratified by 63 countries, now appears likely to go into force without American participation. Only two more countries among the 160 that have signed the treaty need to ratify it for it to take effect.

If that happens without U.S. ratification, the United States would not be a part of the planning or implementation of the international inspection system, which is designed to ensure that prohibited chemicals are not being manufactured.

Considered a landmark by arms-control advocates, the treaty would oblige the United States and other signatories to eliminate all their chemical weapons within 10 years and shut down any facilities that could be used for developing or manufacturing them.

The ban would be enforced by a new U. N. agency that would be empowered to inspect suspected chemical weapons sites and factories at will–even those firms that are only peripherally involved in chemicals production–and demand prosecution of any violators.

WASHINGTON — For a president seeking reelection, Friday’s news of a surge in jobs could not have arrived at a more opportune moment–and President Clinton was quick to take advantage.

“We have the most solid American economy in a generation,” Clinton told reporters hours after the Labor Department reported that unemployment had fallen in June to a six-year low. “The American economy has created 10 million jobs since the beginning of this administration.”

It is a message the White House is certain to repeat often in the coming weeks for one politically powerful reason: Voters judge a president not only as commander in chief but in a very real sense as chairman of the board, the steward of their economic well-being.

While Clinton’s Republican challenger, Bob Dole, has spent most of the campaign so far castigating his opponent over such matters as war and peace, personal character and ethics, it is the public’s verdict on the economy that frequently determines election winners.

And at this point, barring some sudden change, “based on what I see right now with inflation and growth, my prediction puts Bill Clinton between 52% and 53%” in a two-way contest, said Helmut Norpoth, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has looked at the role of the economy in elections dating back to 1872.

Michael Lewis-Beck, a professor at the University of Iowa and author of a book on forecasting presidential elections, concurs.

The economic figures would indicate that “the election isn’t going to be a landslide, but it wouldn’t be a squeaker either,” he said.

Battle Continues

The timing of Friday’s unemployment report may be particularly auspicious for Clinton because the incumbent usually wins reelection when unemployment is falling at midyear, Lewis-Beck says. The economic performance in the fall is not so important because voters’ perceptions of the economy seem to lag behind the actual statistics by several months, analysts say.

Yet for all that, the crucial battle over the economy may not be over yet. Dole can take at least some comfort in evidence that voters have been less than euphoric about the state of the economy and divided over whether the president or his Republican challenger would do a better job in the head office.

On the campaign trail, Dole seeks to reinforce public doubts by lamenting a “Clinton crunch” and claiming that tax increases and over-regulation have cut into the national prosperity. He and his aides argue that many Americans have been frustrated by stagnant incomes and that the pace of economic growth has trailed that of earlier decades.

The Republican candidate was silent on the economy Friday–he and his advisors have been working on an economic plan to put forward, but they have yet to announce one.

Speaking for Dole, his press secretary, Nelson Warfield, said in a statement: “Even as more people found jobs last month, a stunning 70% of Americans agreed the country is on the wrong track,” a reference to recent public opinion polls. “If people are finding jobs but are still unhappy about where the nation is headed, Bill Clinton is in serious danger of unemployment himself.”

Changing Times

The latest economic figures are a notable contrast with those released this week four years ago, when Clinton was the challenger against Republican incumbent George Bush and the June unemployment report showed an increase in the jobless rate, from 7.5% to 7.8%.

Bush, deeply worried about the economic numbers, called on the Federal Reserve that very day to reduce interest rates. The Fed immediately cut the “federal funds” rate (which banks charge each other for overnight loans) from 3.75% to 3.25%. That may have helped end the recession, but it did not save Bush’s job.

This year many analysts believe that the Republicans will have difficulty selling the notion that Clinton has failed in his financial duties during his term in office, because the economy has performed relatively well in some of the ways that households care most about. Employment is high. Inflation is low. Not surprisingly, consumer confidence has registered at solid levels in recent surveys.

Remember the Misery Index? That infamous duo of unemployment and consumer inflation, which added up to almost 22% in 1980, is now below 9% and has been hovering at the lowest levels since the late 1960s.

Not only is unemployment low, but inflation remains stable and subdued around 3%, little changed from the day Clinton took office.

Interest rates have varied. The key 30-year Treasury bond, which stood at 7.6% in late 1992, plunged from 7.88% to 5.95% during 1995 before beginning to rise again earlier this year as the economy expanded. The bond yield jumped from 6.93% Wednesday to 7.19% Friday.

In addition, the federal budget deficit has shrunk by half since Clinton took office.

Contrary Messages

To this day, many conservatives remain angry that Clinton endorsed a deficit-reduction plan in 1993 that increased top income-tax rates for the affluent. Others, however, credit the program with helping to cut the deficit while preserving economic growth.

Even public anxiety over layoffs and corporate downsizing, so ballyhooed in prominent media reports, appears exaggerated, according to polling experts.

“If a Republican were running on this record, you’d hear nothing from the Republican side but, ‘Look what a good job we did,’ ” said Harvard University economist Benjamin Friedman. “I think the economy should definitely be a plus–and a large plus–for Clinton.”

Not surprisingly, a contrary message emerges from the Dole camp. Its assessment: Meager gains in productivity and a trend of subpar economic growth under Clinton have harmed progress in living standards. “Now it’s time to do something about it,” said John B. Taylor, a Stanford University economist who is advising Dole.

Some of the public opinion polls, such as surveys of consumer confidence, do not capture the undercurrents of unease that many Americans feel about the long-term performance of the economy, Taylor added. “I think most of those concerns reflect the slower long-term growth,” he said.

Yet many economists question whether the pejorative label, “Clinton crunch,” gives a true picture of long-term or even short-term trends in the economy.

The U.S. economy expanded at an average annual pace of 1.6% during the years of Bush’s presidency, according to David Wyss, an economist at DRI-McGraw Hill in Lexington, Mass. Under Clinton, Wyss said, the tempo picked up to 2.3%.

Gauging the Mood

Productivity gains–a key driver of living standards–have dipped during Clinton’s term, a matter of concern to economists, although the timing of economic slumps and recoveries complicates any comparisons of different periods.

Eager to put the Clinton statistics under a harsh light, a clutch of GOP advisors has been pressing Dole to unveil a bold plan of across-the-board tax cuts as a way to highlight his devotion to rising living standards. But the candidate has yet to sign off on a final plan.

“And, frankly, with the economy purring along fairly well right now, it’s a hard case to make to the American public that we need a major revolution,” Wyss said.

Certainly, the voters of 1996 view conditions to be more robust than they did four years ago.

In a May Gallup Poll, only 12% of voters considered the economy to be the nation’s most important problem, and just 13% cited jobs as the worst problem. Four years earlier, 29% cited the economy and 21% pointed to jobs.

Similarly, consumers are much more upbeat today. A June index of consumer confidence by the Conference Board came in at a solid 97.6. The same index had plunged to 61.2 four years earlier.

What is more, there is scant evidence that Americans are gripped with the rising terror of losing their jobs, for all the attention to layoff announcements this year. The number of Americans reporting such anxiety–slightly more than a third, according to Gallup polls–is significant but is about the same as it was four years ago.

To some analysts, this means that the media exaggerated the degree of worker anxiety earlier this year, when news coverage zeroed in on the GOP presidential campaign of Patrick J. Buchanan and his focus on the vulnerability of U.S. workers in a world of free trade and corporate downsizing.

“The public didn’t buy into it even when they were hearing most about economic anxiety, and on the whole that’s still true,” maintained Everett C. Ladd, director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.

Still, Dole may find reason for hope in voter attitudes about which candidate would be better for the economy.

In late June, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 37% of Americans felt Clinton would do a better job dealing with the economy, while an almost equal 34% chose Dole. Those findings were similar to the most recent Los Angeles Times Poll, in April.

In fact, one scholarly prognosticator of elections, Ray C. Fair of Yale University, gives Dole the edge in November, in part because of the less-than-spectacular pace of economic growth, though the race appears “so narrow as to be essentially a dead heat.”

It should be noted, however, that forecasting how the economy will influence an election is hardly an exact science. To cite one recent whopper, Fair, Lewis-Beck and others picked Bush in 1992.

Questions of forecasting aside, there may be an irony here: No president can exercise much immediate influence over the $7.5-trillion U.S. economy. On top of that, Clinton has served in a time when his party does not control Congress, further reducing his powers.

“The president has very limited importance in the short run about what happens with the economy,” said Jeremy J. Siegel, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“I think he’s been lucky the economy has done well. Some of that good fortune is going to rub off on him.”

* MARKET JITTERS: Stocks, bonds hit amid fears of further upheaval Monday. D1

* PENT-UP DEMAND: Southland housing market takes rate boost in stride. D1

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Measuring the Misery

The misery index–the sum of the unemployment rate and inflation rate–is lower this election year than in any since 1968. In the table, the unemployment rate is an annual average, and the inflation rate is the yearly change in the consumer price index.

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Unemployment Inflation Misery Presidential rate rate index result 1996* 5.6% 2.9% 8.5% ??? 1992 7.4% 3.0% 10.4% Incumbent lost 1988 5.5% 4.1% 9.6% Incumbent’s party won 1984 7.5% 4.3% 11.8% Incumbent won 1980 7.1% 13.5% 20.6% Incumbent lost 1976 7.7% 5.8% 13.5% Incumbent lost 1972 5.6% 3.2% 8.8% Incumbent won 1968 3.6% 4.2% 7.8% Incumbent’s party lost 1964 5.2% 1.3% 6.5% Incumbent won 1960 5.5% 1.7% 7.2% Incumbent’s party lost

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* 1996 unemployment as of May, CPI change for 12 months ending in May

Source: Labor Department