Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Will is optimist economy recovering

Conservative columnist George Will says there's reason for optimism in America because the economy is rebounding and the battle against terrorism has gone better than expected.

But he also believes President Bush faces an uphill battle in his quest to be re-elected.

Will, who is syndicated in nearly 500 newspapers by the Washington Post, eloquently mixed his optimistic outlook, a political analysis of the 2004 presidential race and baseball witticisms in an upbeat keynote address to the Global Gaming Expo casino industry convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Tuesday.

Will said that because of demographic shifts in the United States since Bush defeated Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000, the president will face a major re-election challenge.

"If Bush gets the same percentage of white, Hispanic and black votes as he did in 2000, he will lose badly," Will said.

He said the Democrats only need to swing about 10 electoral votes and hang onto existing strongholds to wrest the White House away from the Republicans.

But the Democrats, he said, have their own problems.

"It is a party often taken over by people unhinged by hatred," Will said. He said the Democrats have had a track record of choosing a candidate they think is capable of beating the incumbent, only to find that their choice is too liberal for mainstream America. He cited George McGovern's landslide loss to Richard Nixon in 1972 as an example.

"The race in 2004 should be very close unless the Democrats do something very odd," Will predicted. He said he doesn't think announced candidate Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, can unseat Bush.

Will said he expects cultural issues like abortion and gun control will play a greater role in the 2004 race because he thinks the economy is healthy and "joblessness is not the terror it once was."

He said he is optimistic about the economy because it has grown at a 2.4 percent rate, even while the United States has battled terrorism abroad and has endured the crash of the technology industry and confidence-shaking corporate governance scandals since 2000.

He said the battle against terrorism was galvanized by the events of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack the same way the United States pulled together when it was attacked by the Japanese in Pearl Harbor in 1941.

He said the failure of the tech industry needed to be put in perspective -- the industry had been placed high on a pedestal and had a long way to fall. He noted that Time magazine's 1999 Man of the Year, Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, hadn't made a profit when his picture landed on the cover of the magazine.

"I made more selling lemonade as a kid than Amazon.com had at the time," Will said.

And he noted that Priceline.com's stock at one time was overvalued so much that the company was worth more than the entire American airline industry.

But Will said he believes Americans have reason to be optimistic about the future and that the Wall Street cycle appears to be in an upswing.

The upbeat mood was a good fit for the nearly 2,000 people who listened to the opening keynote, the first of three scheduled at the four-day G2E show.

Will, a friend of the gaming industry because of his stance against efforts by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to ban sports betting, didn't say anything about the industry until the final question of a 10-minute Q&A session at the end of the speech.

He said gaming is a growth industry that has some big supporters in government, primarily because it has become a source of revenue through lotteries and taxation on casinos. He said the industry has had support through American history, with lotteries funding the establishment of Harvard University and the Continental Army that fought the revolutionary war.

"You continue to have that support today," Will said, "because people vote with their hands when they buy a lottery ticket and they vote with their cars when they drive to Las Vegas from Southern California."

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