George Bush and the curse of Hoover

By Stephen Evans BBC North America business correspondent

George W Bush and his team have been pounding the rustbelt

An unenviable comparison is looming for George W Bush in this November's US presidential election.

He may well be the first president since Herbert Hoover to have presided over an economy that shed jobs during his White House term - and President Hoover was there when the Depression started in 1929.

When Mr Bush took over in 2000, there were more than a million more jobs for Americans than there are now.

So, with only two months' figures yet to be published before the election, it's highly unlikely that the gap will close.

And that will offer a godsend of publicity to John Kerry, his Democrat challenger.

Rustbelt matters

On top of that, many of the jobs that have gone have been in politically important states with lots of votes in the Electoral College total.

No one wants to be like Herbert Hoover

In the past two weeks, the candidates' cavalcades have all but bumped into each other on the roads of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

These are rustbelt industrial states with declining manufacturing, but which figure in a big way in the election arithmetic.

Mr Bush has a problem of how to pitch his message in the industrial heartland.

If he asserts that the economy is bouncing back, it sounds like he's out of touch; if he admits it's not, it sounds like an admission of failure.

In a state

In Ohio, where nearly a quarter of a million jobs have gone since he took office, Mr Bush asserted that the economy was "strong and getting stronger", but then had to concede that "it lags in places like eastern Ohio".

And Ohio is important because it's the ultimate swing state: it's hard to see Mr Kerry winning the presidency if he doesn't win in Ohio.

In North Carolina, too, a loss of jobs in the past four years may well be significant at the polls.

Conversely, Florida - which tipped by the controversial whisker towards Mr Bush in 2000 - has seen employment grow.

Other swing states have seen a boom in employment: Mr Bush narrowly lost Minnesota and Wisconsin last time but will no doubt be helped by strong economic growth there this time.

Which economy, stupid?

The Fed's decision to raise interest rates will only ake political matters more difficult for Mr Bush. Rising interest rates plus anxiety about jobs is as good a campaigning platform as it gets for a challenger.

The upshot is that the somewhat cliched phrase "it's the economy stupid" is not as true as it seems.

John Kerry hopes to feed on job fears

The economy clearly is crucial but it's a different economy in different places.

All we can say with certainty is that no boom has returned for Mr Bush to trumpet.

Mr Kerry, on the other hand, will be able to compare his opponent to Herbert Hoover.

Which is precisely what he is doing. At a rally in Pennsylvania, a state that's seen more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs disappear in the past eight years, the challenger mocked Mr Bush's claim that the economy had turned the corner.

Mr Kerry said: "The last time we had a president who talked about turning the corner was Herbert Hoover."

It's probably not a fair comparison. Mr Bush did after all inherit a recession in the making. He can hardly be blamed for the stock-market bubble that expanded under Mr Clinton. But who said politics was fair?