Katie Couric negatively compared President
George W. Bush with Herbert Hoover in
2004, citing the unemployment situation
during Bush’s first term in office.
When a Republican gets near the
White House, both the media and Democrats are quick to compare him
to President Herbert Hoover – conjuring instant images of the Great
Depression.
This was a common theme during President
George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. But it cropped up
when his father ran for president and has already reappeared during
Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2008 presidential campaign.
In 2004, journalists and Democratic
politicians hyped unemployment predictions that cast a shadow over
the first Bush administration.
“This is not the same economy that it was
back in the 1980s; this is the worst situation this country’s been
in since the Hoover administration,” said liberal talk radio host Ed
Shultz to Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today,” Feb. 3, 2004. Closer to the
election, Katie Couric alleged the very same thing: “not since
Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression has a chief executive
presided over four years when more jobs were lost than created,” she
said on “Today” Oct. 24, 2004.
“The president is on his way to becoming
the first incumbent president to have a net job creation loss since
Herbert Hoover,” commented Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” Mar. 7,
2004.
But the comparison started only a year and
a half into Bush’s first term.
“President Bush has a worse stock
situation according to the Standard & Poor’s than any president at
this point in the administration. And that includes Herbert Hoover,
by the way,” touted Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America,” July 23,
2002.
Coverage continued into 2003. “Mr. Bush
risks becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover, during the
Great Depression, to preside over a net decline in employment,”
reported David Gregory on a Jul. 3, 2003, broadcast of “Nightly
News.”
Those claims were later proven wrong. A
2006 report released by the Business & Media Institute,
“Hit Job,” demonstrated that very point.
“Roughly 4.8 million jobs have been added
since May 2003 – 29 straight months of positive job growth.
Unemployment just dropped down to 4.7 percent, lower than the
average of all three recent decades,” stated the report, based on
employment data through the end of 2005.
But that would not be the Democrats’ last
attempt at such a cloudy comparison. “John McCain makes Herbert
Hoover look like an activist,” said Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor
during the Clinton Administration, on ABC’s “This Week,” March 30,
2008.
“When I listened to McCain give that
speech, I immediately thought of Herbert Hoover’s Treasury
secretary,” agreed fellow guest, Paul Krugman of The New York Times.
And when McCain maintained “It’s not the duty of government to bail
out and reward those who act irresponsibly,” Democratic presidential
hopeful Hillary Clinton responded that his policy sounded
“remarkably like Herbert Hoover.”
