Econ summit probably won't affect Bush's legacy

WASHINGTON — This week's economic summit should offer President Bush a chance to take a final, sentimental bow on the international stage and give historians the image of a man in charge.

That's not going to happen, however.

Instead, Bush limps into the meeting of 20 world leaders with a domestic approval rating of 24 percent in a new Ipsos/McClatchy Poll released Wednesday, worse than any president's showing since the advent of modern polling more than 60 years ago. He's nearly as low in a Gallup Poll: Only 27 percent approved of the way Bush is handling his job.

Bush loyalists would like this summit to be the final piece of his months-old bid to right the economy, after his February $168 billion economic-stimulus plan and last month's $700 billion financial-rescue package. However, his presidential legacy is unlikely to be even mildly affected by this weekend's effort to stabilize the world economy.

Instead, "he is in a weak position to play much of a leadership role at this point," said George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University, in College Station.

"He's the lamest of lame ducks at this point," added Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin.

If anything, the Friday-Saturday Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy "puts Bush on the spot," said Michael Mezey, a professor of political science at Chicago's DePaul University, because it could highlight his inability to make a difference.

History

Bush, who majored in history at Yale University, has met routinely with historians in recent years, though White House aides said the sessions reflect the president's interest in history, not an effort to burnish his legacy. Any last-ditch bid to affect history's judgment of his presidency is clouded by three challenges he probably didn't anticipate: an unforgiving public, two unfinished wars and a reeling economy.

The president's approval ratings tumbled during the administration's mishandling of the aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Katrina and never recovered.

Public attitudes toward Bush differ sharply from the sympathetic goodbyes that people have given recent presidents. Presidents Clinton and Reagan, enjoying strong economies, ended their eight years with approval ratings in the mid-60s. Even George H.W. Bush, who was soundly defeated for re-election in 1992, left office with a 56 percent approval mark.

However, the latest Gallup survey found his son's approval well below even President Truman's 32 percent in December 1952, during the Korean War's third year, and President Carter's 34 percent in 1980.

Analysts said Bush, who figured he'd be remembered mostly as the president who stood up to terrorists, instead is dogged by a legacy that he didn't expect: judgments on his stewardship of the economy.

"He's stunned by his legacy being compared to that of Herbert Hoover," Mezey said. "He was willing to be tied to the kind of legacy Lyndon Johnson had with Vietnam."

No president controls the economy, as some Bush sympathizers point out, but the federal government does have a large responsibility for helping it work.

"No administration can completely handle the economy in this day and age," Republican strategist Brent Littlefield said.

His is a lonely voice, however.

"The president gets a lot of the blame," said William Stewart, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. "He was willing to plunge the nation into debt."

Image

Bush is indicating reluctance to go along with a second stimulus package this fall, even though majorities of both houses of Congress have signaled their support.

"He doesn't do the popular thing if he thinks it's wrong. This president is convinced history will judge that he's right,' said Jeremy Mayer, an associate professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia.

"Bush's legacy is in the hands of President-elect Obama," said Tim Blessing, director of the Alvernia University Presidential Performance Study in Reading, Pa. "Say we get out of Iraq and everything holds together," he said. "And if Afghanistan goes well, and we don't slide into a depression or long recession, everything that came before Obama will get more of a glow."

The weekend's summit could fit into such a brighter image of Bush, but legacy shapers doubt it.

International leaders aren't going to be eager to make a deal with a lame duck, Edwards said.

"Everyone knows someone else is going to be sitting in the Oval Office in two months, and that's who they really want to deal with," he said.

Albright, Leach to represent Obama

President-elect Obama named former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Representative Jim Leach as his emissaries at the international economic summit in Washington.

Albright and Leach will be available for unofficial meetings with representatives of industrial and emerging countries who will be at the summit being hosted by President Bush.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the Bush administration views the Obama team's participation as appropriate and welcome.

Albright and Leach will brief Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden after the meeting.

Albright, 71, was secretary of state in President Clinton's administration and had backed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

Leach, 66, is a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He represented Iowa in the U.S. House from 1977 to 2007 and is a former chairman of the House Banking Committee.

— Bloomberg News