'04 The Issues: Jobs And The Election: Can They Find a Good Employment Line?

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Jobs have always made or broken the political fortunes of Presidents, yet outsourcing packs a powerful new wallop. That's because it hits middle-and upper-income workers--software engineers, X-ray readers, financial analysts--who thought they were immune to the great job exodus to Mexico and China that has decimated blue collars over the past 25 years. These are people who believed they were safe in a global economy, because they worked with their minds, not with their hands. "Outsourcing is the ultimate nightmare issue for the White House, because it's a problem that every voter understands. It's extraordinarily difficult to solve--and impossible to solve in the short run," says Bruce Reed, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, who was also Bill Clinton's chief domestic-policy adviser. And while Bush can blame many of the economy's woes on the vicissitudes of war, terrorism and corporate scandals, outsourcing is one problem that won't go away when those do.

But even as the Democrats denounce the phenomenon, the proposals they offer do little more than attack it at the margins. Kerry calls for a study to examine the problem and possible solutions. He would discourage outsourcing federal contracts and would require employees from outsourced call centers to identify their location so that consumers can respond to that information as they see fit. (His own campaign was embarrassed by a firm it had hired that was routing calls to Wisconsin voters through Canada.) North Carolina Senator John Edwards would also try a combination of browbeating and suasion: he would create a new Office for Corporate Responsibility at the Commerce Department to encourage companies to keep jobs here rather than outsourcing them.

Outsourcing isn't the only jobs issue the Bush White House has uncharacteristically bumbled lately. Another political land mine exploded when the 417-page Economic Report of the President, sent to Congress under Bush's signature, delivered the staggeringly optimistic forecast that the economy would create millions of jobs this year. When asked about the prediction, Bush backed away, avoiding a question about the number after his Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary cast doubt upon it. Yet another section of the report raised the important question of whether making a sandwich at a fast-food restaurant (some assembly required) should be reclassified as a manufacturing job--a prospect that brought immediate comparisons to Ronald Reagan's disastrous effort to classify catsup as a vegetable on school-lunch menus.