Bye-bye Bush items are hot sellers

PORTLAND — "Bush's Last Day" digital key chains count down the time until noon Jan. 20, 2009, when he will leave office. "Final Countdown" hot sauce features a cartoonish portrait of the president. "Bush Biskits" dog treats are marketed with an impolite "crunch crunch, he's gone."

The countdown to the end of President Bush's second term has spawned an industry of sorts, with companies offering an assortment of items, from wine glasses to license plates.

"We're selling in every state and in places in Europe," said Elliot Nachwalter, 57, a wood sculptor from Manchester, Vt., who started designing countdown items in 2005 because he disagreed with Bush's environmental policies.

His company, BLD Designs, has sent out "way over 1 million items," he said.

Vince Ponzo of New York City started selling countdown key chains soon after Bush was re-elected.

"We didn't go berserk. We kept it pretty simple," he said. "But it's still going great."

He has sold about 125,000 key chains on his Web site, where he also markets desk clocks and wall clocks that display the time remaining in the Bush presidency.

The marketplace of merchandise counting down the final days of a U.S. president is a new phenomenon, some historians and academics said.

"It is absolutely unprecedented in American presidential history and can be explained by a number of factors," said Jerold Podair, who teaches American studies and history at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.

Podair attributes the emergence of such entrepreneurs to "the level of visceral animus against Bush personally" and the ease of advertising and marketing merchandise on the Internet.

Robert Gilbert, who teaches presidential politics at Boston's Northeastern University, agreed that Bush's unpopularity fuels the market for countdown merchandise. He cited polls of academics that show 83 percent rate Bush as a failure or below average.

"Evaluations of this type excite this kind of reaction by people who try to capitalize on this," Gilbert said.

Countdown merchandise might indicate the president's critics harbor something more than disapproval, said Michal Strahilevitz, who teaches marketing and consumer behavior at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

"Those who disapprove of Bush might tell you that they more than disapprove of him, they are mad," he said.

At BLD Designs, the countdown business is going strong, Nachwalter said: "I don't know if President Bush supports our company, but every time he says something, business takes off. We look forward to his next TV appearance."