Rupert Cornwell: It maddens his foes, but Bush is a lucky President

More people blame Clinton than Bush for the moral climate in which white-collar fraud flourishes

Eat your hearts out, Bush-haters in Britain, Europe and beyond. It just ain't happening. This past week, the first of George W's 57th year on this planet, has been his worst as President by far. But, somehow, the good ship "moral clarity" sails on. The avidly awaited crash in his popularity simply refuses to materialise.

Consider what went wrong. America's military achievement in Afghanistan is sullied by the grudging admission that its forces were responsible for killing scores of civilians in a botched anti-terrorist raid ­ which provoked the first popular demonstrations against the US since the overthrow of the Taliban.

Then came the horror show on Wall Street, and the resurfacing of Mr Bush's own less than heroic corporate record. On Tuesday, he was scheduled to make a major speech on the need to stamp out business wrongdoing. So, inexplicably, he calls a press conference on its eve, at which he has nothing particular to announce. But the White House pressroom, like nature, abhors a vacuum and Mr Bush, as a child could have predicted, was peppered with questions about his riproaring days at Harken Energy.

As a result, the headlines as the President went to New York to lecture corporate America on the need to put its house in order were not about WorldCom executives twisting in the wind at a Congressional hearing, but about his own business dealings a decade earlier.

When he did make his big speech, his heart manifestly wasn't in it. Deep down, this Bush still believes that self-regulation and deregulation are the way to go ­ and on Tuesday it showed. The critics panned his performance, and the Dow delivered its verdict by tanking 450 points, or 5 per cent, that day and the next.

Unabashed, our hero returns to Washington where he learns that a legal group is suing his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, for fraud arising from some dodgy accounting at Halliburton, the giant oil services firm he headed during the 1990s. Next, a new blow strikes as it emerges that, as a Harken director, Mr Bush himself had taken a loan from his company ­ exactly the practice he had condemned two days earlier on Wall Street.

Make no mistake, this is Bush's first real domestic crisis. In a country where two-thirds of the population own shares, a plummeting Wall Street affects everyone. People feel less wealthy; their pension plans lose value. Consumer confidence falls, and so may consumer spending, which would spell big trouble for the real economy. As Poppy learnt to his cost a decade ago, having vanquished Saddam Hussein, voters are more impressed by recessions than military triumphs.

The President faces two interlocking problems. The first is his personal credibility. Can this son of privilege, who built his business career on the Bush name and the Bush connections, really be trusted to cleanse the corporate class of which he is issue? And if he cannot, his Republican party risks once again being identified as the party of big business, more concerned with the wellbeing of fat cats than the interests of the little guy.

That perception has brought electoral disaster for Republicans in the past, and could do so again at November's mid-term elections. Indeed one warning sign is apparent already. A sudden shift in that lodestar for psephologists, the "Right Track" index, shows that the proportion of Americans who believe the country is heading in the right direction has dropped to just 50 per cent.

But, miraculously and maddeningly for his foes, nothing seems to rub off on Bush himself. If this had been the Clinton administration, the opposition party and the press would be foaming with demands for an independent prosecutor to investigate his past business dealings. Clinton was crucified for a two-bit land deal where he actually lost money. Oil company director George Bush sells shares for $800,000 shortly before it releases news that sends its stock price skidding, and then admits he received loans from the company ­ and all you hear is mild tut-tutting.

His personal approval rating is still above 70 per cent, admittedly below the stratospheric levels of immediately after 11 September, but remarkable nonetheless. More people blame Clinton than Bush for creating the moral climate in which this epic rash of white-collar fraud has flourished.

Starting with the very circumstances of his election, Bush has been a lucky President. After the parties had slugged out a 1-1 draw on the special prosecutor, with Republican misery over Iran-Contra being compensated by Democratic embarrassment over Whitewater, the post was scrapped. Then, in political terms, Bush got lucky with terrorism.

The events of 11 September changed the political climate. America is "at war" and in wartime you line up behind your country and the commander-in-chief. As Bush asked the other day in Minneapolis, in that language that makes non-Americans cringe: "What's important in life? You know, the bottom line and this corporate America stuff, is that important? Or is serving your neighbour, loving your neighbour like you'd like to be loved yourself?" Amazingly, the evidence is that for Americans and Mr Bush, "the bottom line" is not the bottom line.

Sooner or later, surely, neighbourly love will run out, and this President's luck will too. But it ain't happened yet.

rupertcornwell@hotmail.com