DUBYA, BLOW YOUR HORN
Are the Bush folks up to it?
So far, it seems not.
Democrats don't think Bush should be permitted to talk about national security, and they've sought to shift the debate to the economy.
To hear the Dems tell it, America's economy is on its last legs.
Only one problem: It ain't true!
In fact, the economy is doing just fine in numerous areas.
And Team Bush - starting with the president himself - must shout that point at the top of his lungs.
What Bush's stewardship - particularly his tax-cut plan - has done for the economy is itself remarkable.
Consider:
* The recession, which in essence began with the popping of the high-tech bubble during President's Clinton's second term, ended relatively quickly once Bush got to the White House.
* Despite the jolt of 9/11, growth has not once since fallen into the red.
* Indeed, during Bush's tenure, America's economy grew at its fastest quarterly rate in 20 years - a positively sizzling annualized 8.2 percent.
* Manufacturing activity has risen to its highest level in nearly two decades.
* After-tax incomes soared 8.4 percent in 2001.
* Worker productivity is near a 20-year high.
* More folks own homes than ever.
* Last year, the Dow rose 20 percent; NASDAQ zoomed up 50 percent.
* Inflation, interest rates and mortgage rates are near historic lows.
* Most economists in a Wall Street Journal poll last week projected growth in '04 at a more-than-healthy 4 percent.
* That beats last year's solid 3.1 percent rate, and '02's respectable 2.2 percent.
Yes, many jobs were lost. But much of that is attributable to the Clinton-era high-tech crash, 9/11 and the rapid growth in productivity (a good thing).
Anyway, the economy today is generating jobs: Last month marked the sixth consecutive month of increased employment. And the jobless rate (5.6 percent) is actually below the average for the '70s, '80s - and '90s, Bill Clinton's days of wine and roses.
Americans can be forgiven for faulting Bush on the economy: That's all they've been hearing from the press - and Team Bush has hardly mustered a response.
With the '04 race now in full swing, Bush & Co. are going to have to work like the dickens to correct the record.
This time, it's not the economy, stupid.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/20802.htmThe NY Post is
en fuego today:
March 15, 2004 -- SEN. John Kerry boasts how he "sounded the alarm on terrorism years before 9/ 11," referring to his 1997 book "The New War." Too bad he didn't blast it when it really counted - four months before the hijackings, when he was hand-delivered evidence of serious security breaches at Logan International Airport, with specific warnings that terrorists could exploit them.
Former FAA security officials say the Massachusetts senator had the power to prevent at least the Boston hijackings and save the World Trade Center and thousands of lives, yet he failed to take effective action after they gave him a prophetic warning that his state's main airport was vulnerable to multiple hijackings.
"He just did the Pontius Pilate thing and passed the buck" on back through the federal bureaucracy, said Brian Sullivan, a retired FAA special agent from the Boston area who in May 2001 personally warned Kerry that Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suicide operation possibly involving "a coordinated attack."
Rewind to May 6, 2001. That night, a Boston TV station (Fox-25) aired reporter Deborah Sherman's story on an undercover investigation at Logan that Sullivan and another retired agent helped set up. In nine of 10 tries, a crew got knives and other weapons through security checkpoints - including the very ones the 9/11 hijackers would later exploit.
The next day, Sullivan fired off a two-page letter to Kerry highlighting the systemic failures. rest of story