Bush was in Ohio (20 electoral votes) again over the weekend, emphasizing his new “turn the corner” campaign theme that he seems so excited about. The interesting thing about the appearance to me — aside from the fact that Bush’s rhetoric sounds a lot like Herbert Hoover’s 70 years ago — was yet another campaign appearance for Bush at a Timken Co. plant.
I realize that Timken’s CEO is a major Bush fundraiser and that the Timken family has given more than $1 million in the past three elections to the Republican cause. But you’d think, after a while, Bush would be able to find a different company to visit. Indeed, after what’s happened in the recent past, you’d think Timken would stop inviting Bush back.
* In April 2003, Bush was trying to rally support for his third major tax cut scheme when he visited a Timken plant and said, “The greatest strength of the American economy is found right here, right in this room.” A few months later, company announced that it was cutting 900 jobs and lowering its earnings forecasts.
* Just a year after Bush held out Timken as a model for American “jobs and growth,” the company announced a plan to close three plants and eliminate 1,300 jobs.
And yet Bush returned to Timken yet again on Friday, this time hearing some pretty serious anxiety from the company’s workers.
[Bush said] that the economy “lags in places like eastern Ohio,” and then referred to his conversation with the Timken workers, who, he said, “told me they are nervous about their future.”
After Bush’s abysmal record thus far, can anyone blame them?