President George W. Bush stands at a crossroads as he begins his monthlong summer break on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

His political fortunes are poised to rise, or fall, depending largely on the economy, developments in Iraq, and on who's talking.

"If the economy takes off, Bush is going to be unbeatable barring the bolt from the blue. If it doesn't, he's extremely vulnerable," said Allan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University.

A year ago, the president waited until the end of his vacation before starting his campaign in September to sell the public on war with Iraq.

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," his chief of staff, Andrew Card, said at the time - indelicately, critics suggested.

Bush's fall product line this time is his own re-election. And he's not waiting for September.

Already on the way toward raising an expected US$170 million, Bush plans to interrupt his vacation with fund-raisers around the country, at the rate of one every five days.

"I think the American people, now that they've realized I'm going to seek re-election, expect me to seek re-election," a buoyant Bush told his first full postwar news conference last week. "They expect me to actually do what candidates do."

But US casualties and war costs are mounting, the administration's credibility on prewar intelligence is under challenge, the job market has stagnated for three years and Bush's poll ratings are down. As a result, Democrats also are sounding upbeat, more so than in months.

"The president has suffered major political damage on multiple fronts in the last month," Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Bob Shrum wrote in recent memo to Democratic activists.

But Republicans, looking at some of the same data and poll results, concluded that Bush was in good shape.

His ratings, while lower than in the spring, were holding well in the mid-to-high 50s. That is higher than President Bill Clinton's ratings at the same point ahead of his successful re-election in 1996.

Furthermore, Republicans emphasized, polls suggested strong support for Bush's handling of both the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism. Continuing American casualties, at the rate of about one a day, do not appear to be cutting into that support, at least not yet.

While the economy remained sluggish, Republicans pointed to some recent indicators such as stronger-than-expected growth in the second quarter, a drop in jobless benefits and a rising stock market as sure signs of a long-awaited turnaround. Unemployment fell in July for the first time in more than a year, to 6.2 per cent, even though much of that was due to an exodus from the labour force of discouraged job-seekers.

"Even though some of the numbers are good, there's still too many people looking for work," Bush said on Friday at a meeting with his Cabinet.

Bush also seemed buoyed by the deaths of Saddam Hussein's two sons. Also, advisers hoped his assumption of responsibility last week for using a discredited intelligence claim in his State of the Union address would help to put that controversy behind and clear the decks as Bush begins his Texas vacation.

But Democratic consultant Ray Strother insists Bush has a difficult job of salesmanship ahead. "He's got to convince people the economy hasn't gone south and that the war is improving," Strother said.

Strother suggested Bush would not be talking about the economy so much "if he wasn't worried about it."

He also suggested that Bush's disclosure that he had ordered government lawyers to explore ways to rule out gay marriages was a "sleight of hand...to generate another social issue to divert attention" away from the economy while also shoring up support within his conservative base.

Political analysts "are all over the place" on whether Bush's political fortunes are rising, falling or holding steady, said Fred Greenstein, a political scientist at Princeton University. "It seems as if people see what they want in him."

(China Daily   August 4, 2003)