Good Luck, Mr. President!

What does the future hold for George W. Bush, elected after the most complicated vote count in American history? A question for the whole world

by MARCO BARDAZZI

When George W. Bush left his home state of Texas in December to go to Washington for his initial meetings as President-elect, the first person he wanted to see was not his predecessor Bill Clinton. Nor was it his ex-rival Al Gore, with whom he had just ended a struggle leading to Gore’s forced concession in the only election in American history settled in the courtroom. No. Bush’s first meeting was with the only man in the United States who at this moment holds a power comparable to that of the new man in the White House. His first handshake was for Alan Greenspan, President of the Federal Reserve, the “money man” of the American economy. This was an obligatory act of homage on the part of the President. Greenspan is the most powerful of all the powerful persons–and there are many of them–with whom Bush will have to deal in the next four years. The President of the United States is not an absolute monarch, obviously. The system of checks and balances on which America has built its democracy in the course of the last two centuries imposes numerous limits on the White House’s freedom of action. But for Bush, these constitutional limits are joined by other major obstacles that could further hinder his capacity for maneuvering. The first is represented by the “adventurous” way in which he won the Presidency. But in the end, America, like the rest of the world, may forget about these things in a hurry.

An air of crisis
The other “boulders” are much greater, and the most threatening of all is the condition of the economy. After years of astonishing growth at a pace that made all the laws of the market seem old and outdated, the locomotive of the U.S. economy is slowing down, with a great squeal of brakes and sparks from the incandescent metal tracks, accompanied by fear among the passengers who have been enjoying the ride in the luxury cars of the train. All the indicators are pointing downwards. The Nasdaq, the market for technological stocks, the world showcase of the New Economy, tumbled into an abyss of losses around Christmastime. The more austere and solid Dow Jones Index is not much healthier. The percentage of their income that Americans devote to savings, which from 1992 to today had fallen from 9% to zero, is beginning to rise, which means a reduction in consumer spending and crisis for a number of sectors. Housing starts have fallen 4% since 1999. Requests for unemployment insurance are rising. The giant General Motors has announced that in the first four months of 2001 it will produce 1.3 million automobiles, 14% less than in 2000, because people are not buying them. Intel, the microprocessor colossus (Pentium), is preparing for lower earnings than predicted earlier, because of the fall in computer sales. The consumer confidence index is pointing decisively downwards. The Bush era, in a word, is starting out under the sign of fear because of a word that market protagonists always utter in worried tones: recession. And in times of recession, as in times of growth, the country has learned to look not toward Pennsylvania Avenue, the address of the White House, but to a solid building on Constitution Avenue in Washington: the headquarters of the Federal Reserve.

Those eight Tuesdays
It is here that Greenspan, a practically mythical figure by now in the United States and in the world, works his magical spells. In a room dominated by a large oval table, eight times a year–always on Tuesday–a small group of federal bankers meets, presided over by Greenspan, to decide whether to raise, lower, or maintain unchanged the federal interest rates. On this decision, along with other important economic and financial indicators, depend the American economy, the movements of the stock market in New York, and inevitably also the fate of European portfolios. Greenspan, even more than Clinton, has been the man behind the explosive economic growth in America in these past few years. And now part of the fate of the new Bush administration is also in Greenspan’s hands. For this reason, King George II, who brought the Bush dynasty back into the White House after eight years of Clinton reign, hurried to pay homage to the President of the Fed before Christmas, on the eve of the last of the eight meetings in 2000 (in which the interest rate was left unchanged, but with the warning that the slowing down of the economy would force them to intervene soon). To discover what the other powers are, besides the Fed, with which Bush will have to contend, all one has to do is run through the bibliography of one of America’s most famous journalists, Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who, in the early 1970s, with his colleague Carl Bernstein, broke the scandal of Watergate (which resulted in President Nixon’s resignation). After writing several books on the White House, Woodward set out to uncover the other sites of real power in Washington. And, year-after-year, he has devoted books to the CIA, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon: all spheres whose operations will condition the new president’s actions. Woodward’s latest book, published just before the election, is entitled Maestro, and is–note the coincidence!–the biography of Alan Greenspan and a journey through the secrets of the Federal Reserve.

The “friends” of the President
In addition to the “institutional” powers, there are others, less clear, who are ready to have their say in the President’s decisions. To discover them, one has to run through another list, one not found in Woodward’s books. It is the list of the most generous financers of the Republican campaign, who gave millions of dollars even after the election was over to pay Bush’s legal expenses in his hard and costly battle in Florida. The National Rifle Association, after having made contributions with lots of zeros to Bush’s battle chest, will certainly want to have its say when Congress–which is now in Republican hands–will address the question of gun control laws. Exxon and the other oil companies, who also financed George II, are eagerly waiting for Bush to inaugurate his program of oil exploration in Alaska’s national parks, until now off-limits to oil drilling. Pharmaceuticals and insurance companies are ready to divide up the pie of the growing privatization of health care promised by the President-elect. Microsoft and the tobacco multinationals–Philip Morris was one of the major financers of the Republican campaign–have heaved a sigh of relief: after years of confrontation with the antitrust agencies of the Clinton administration, they are hoping for a more favorable eye from Bush. Forced to navigate in a sea filled with all these icebergs, on a ship laden with the controversies over his close victory and a country still split in two by the election battles, the 43rd President of the United States must now show that he is truly the unexpected charismatic leader of a country that is asking questions about its future.