Public Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy

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Public Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

majority of Americans say that the nation's economy is in its worst shape in nearly a decade and that President Bush and Congressional leaders are spending too much time talking about Iraq while neglecting problems at home, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found signs of economic distress that cut across party and geographic lines. Nearly half of all Americans are worried that they or someone in their household will be out of a job within a year.

The number of Americans who said they believe the economy is worse than it was just two years ago has increased markedly since the summer. The number of Americans who approved of the way Mr. Bush has handled the economy — 41 percent — was the lowest it has been in his presidency. Many people said they worried that a war in Iraq — which most Americans view as inevitable — would disrupt an already unsettled economy.

The poll found that despite the emphasis by Mr. Bush since Labor Day on the need to move against Saddam Hussein, support for such a policy has not changed appreciably since the summer. While most Americans said they backed Mr. Bush's campaign against Iraq, the sentiment was expressed with reservations and signs of apprehension about its potential repercussions.

Americans said they feared a long and costly war that could spread across the Middle East and encourage more terrorist attacks in the United States. They said they did not want the United States to act without support from allies and did not want the United States to act before United Nations weapons inspectors had an opportunity to enter Iraq.

As Congress prepares to resume debate on a resolution supporting the use of force in Iraq, Americans said they thought members of both parties were trying to manipulate the issue for their political advantage.

"Bush is spending way too much time focusing on Iraq instead of the economy, and he's doing it as a political move," said Gladys Steele, 42, a homemaker from Seattle who is a political independent, in a follow-up interview yesterday. "He thinks keeping us fearful about going to war will distract us from how bad the economy is."

The poll was conducted a month before what Democrats and Republicans view as an extraordinarily competitive round of midterm Congressional elections.

In recent days many Democrats have grown glum about the upcoming election, arguing that Mr. Bush and the White House have successfully drowned out domestic issues that the Democrats had hoped to capitalize on with his talk of war. Many Democrats had even feared that the debate over war had undermined their chances of winning the House and holding on to their one-seat margin in the Senate.

Mr. Bush is to deliver a national address on the subject tonight.

But the Times/CBS News poll suggests that no matter what is happening in Washington, voters are more concerned with the economy and domestic issues than with what is happening with Saddam Hussein, presenting the Democrats a glimmer of hope as Congress prepares to vote on the Iraq resolution and adjourn to campaign.

Whether any of this makes a difference in an election that will most likely be decided in a handful of Senate and House races is an entirely different matter. A nationwide poll, while revealing of broad sentiments in the American electorate, cannot be used to predict results accurately in the relatively small number of Congressional races that are considered competitive.

This poll, conducted by telephone Thursday through Saturday, was taken of 668 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

By every indication, the subject of Iraq should dominate the news out of Washington for at least the next week. There is Mr. Bush's speech tonight, and then the debate in Congress is expected to last at least through Friday.

In addition, in a handful of competitive races, Republican candidates are seeking to use the issue of acting against Iraq as a way to undercut Democratic opponents.

Two-thirds of Americans say they approve of the United States using military power to oust Mr. Hussein. A majority of Americans say that Mr. Bush has a clear plan to deal with Iraq; by contrast, a majority say the White House does not have a clear plan to deal with terrorism at home.

But there are signs of ambivalence.

With Mr. Bush pushing for quick action against Baghdad, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they wanted to give the United Nations more time to try to send weapons inspectors into Iraq.

Similarly, most Americans said Mr. Bush should not act until he wins approval from Congress — and they applauded Congress's pushing the administration for details on its Iraqi plans.

There were also clear suggestions that some Americans suspected that Mr. Bush's intentions went beyond simply disarming Iraq. More than half said that Mr. Bush was more interested in removing Mr. Hussein than in removing potentially lethal weapons.

Fully 7 in 10 respondents said they expected that war with Iraq was inevitable. More than half said they believed that Iraq poses a greater threat to the United States today than it did two years ago.

On a number of measures, the poll suggested that politicians in Washington were out of step with the concern of Americans. Again and again, in questions and in follow-up interviews, respondents talked more about the economy than Baghdad and expressed concern that leaders in Washington were not paying enough attention to the issues that mattered to them.

"There is no balance right now between finding solutions to our domestic problems and our foreign affairs," said Michael Chen, 30, an independent who works as a sales manager in Beaverton, Ore. "No one is talking about how to solve the economic downfall."

Geoff Crooks, 44, an independent who lives in Lincoln, Neb., said: "We are paying way too much attention to Iraq."

"Meanwhile, the stock market has fallen 25 percent and tons of people are unemployed — including myself," said Mr. Crooks, who had worked as a travel consultant.

Democrats have hoped that concern about the economy would allow them to turn this election into a referendum on Republican fiscal policies, in a way that would sweep out of office a large number of Republicans — what politicians refer to as a nationalization of the election. So far, there is no evidence that that has begun.

But the concern about the economy would seem to be a matter of concern for Mr. Bush, who is two years away from his own re-election campaign. More than two-thirds said the president should be paying more attention to the economy than he is.

"I hate to say this because I'm a Republican, but the economy was better when Clinton was in office,' said Donna Doolittle, 42, a benefits coordinator who works at a hospital in Holiday, Fla. "Maybe interest rates are low now, but health insurance is going up; there are layoffs."

Mrs. Doolittle said she thought that Mr. Bush was trying to make the country "feel safe after what happened" but added, "We need to feel safe about the economy, too."

There were other findings that could prove important over the final weeks of the campaign. Over the summer, Democrats had hoped that the turmoil on Wall Street and reports of corporate malfeasance would give them an issue to use against Republicans. The poll found that nearly half the respondents thought that Mr. Bush was more interested in protecting corporations than in protecting ordinary Americans.

There was unhappiness as well among Americans about Congress. Nearly half of the respondents said they disapproved of the way Congress was doing its job, and 70 percent said they thought it was time to throw out some incumbents and bring in some new members. In 1994, when Republicans, lead by Newt Gingrich, swept Democrats out of control of the House, that figure was 84 percent.

But at the same time, in a not-unusual bit of discordance often found by poll takers measuring the view of Congress, more than half of registered voters said they would vote to re-elect their own local representative.

Not unusually, among all respondents, Republicans were seen as stronger on the military and in dealing with terror — the issues that have largely dominated the news out of Washington over the past month. Democrats are seen as the stronger party in dealing with domestic issues; in particular, Social Security and prescription drugs. Those are the issues that party leaders said they were planning to try once more to emphasize once Congress leaves Washington and the campaigns move into their final days.