President: "Hold on, it's just around the corner!"

President Bush told audiences on Friday in stops in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, "We are turning the corner, and we're not turning back."

Sound familiar?

October 22, 1928

“Prosperity is no idle expression. It is a job for every worker; it is the safety and safeguard of very business and every home. A continuation of the policies of the Republican party is fundamentally necessary to the future advancement of this progress and to the further building up of this prosperity.”

—Herbert Hoover, Campaign Address, Madison Square Garden

October 6, 1928

“As never before does the keeping of our economic machine in tune depend upon wise policies in the administrative side of the government.”

—Herbert Hoover, Campaign Address, Elizabethtown, Tennessee

November, 1929

“Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.”

—Herbert Hoover

January 21, 1930

“Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the he temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.”

—News dispatch from Washington

March 8, 1930

“President Hoover predicted today that the worst effect of the crash upon unemployment will have been passed during the next sixty days.”

—Washington dispatch

Meanwhile, back to the present corner we're turning.

The White House forecast yesterday that the U.S. budget deficit for this year will be a highest-ever $445 billion, lower than the administration previously predicted but nearly 20 percent larger than last year's record shortfall.

[snip]

Further clouding the economic picture, the Commerce Department announced that economic growth slowed sharply in the second quarter, to an annual rate of 3 percent, from a revised rate of 4.5 percent in the first quarter. Dragged down by the lowest consumer spending in three years, the quarterly growth rate was the lowest since the first quarter of 2003.

In addition, the Labor Department announced yesterday that from the start of 2001 to the end of 2003, 11.4 million workers were displaced from jobs -- 5.3 million of them from jobs they had held for three or more years. Though two-thirds of the 5.3 million found new jobs, 57 percent of those who did find work earned less than they had previously.

Still, the White House declared a qualified victory. "The deficit remains at a level that we think is unwelcome," said Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget. "The good news is that it is much lower than we projected, and we or any of the other forecasters projected just six months ago, and we believe that that is a product of the strong economic policies that the president has put in place, and that the trend will continue."

[snip]

Despite yesterday's report on slower economic growth, the administration also raised its overall growth forecast for the year to 4.7 percent from an earlier forecast of 4.4 percent. Growth in 2005 was put at 3.7 percent.

To paraphrase the President who rescued the nation from the wise policies of the Hoover administration, "We have nothing to fear...but four more years of this!"