Avoiding the blame game for American financial crisis

Washington: Mindful of his low approval ratings, US President George W. Bush has sometimes likened himself to Harry Truman, an unpopular president when he left office and now admired for his handling of the Cold War.

But in the grips of what some experts are calling a once-in-a-century financial meltdown, Bush could soon find himself struggling to avoid comparisons to a very different president - Herbert Hoover, who presided at the start of the Great Depression.

With Wall Street's upheaval spreading fear among investors worldwide, analysts agree there is plenty of blame to go around - not only for the current administration, the Federal Reserve and Cong-ress but for their predecessors as well - for letting the situation deteriorate to this point.

Yet, since a President must ultimately bear the weight of history's judgment, Bush is seeing another piece of his legacy slip away.

"The question is, on whose watch did this whole mess happen?" said Terry Madonna, a political historian at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. "Where was the financial regulation? Where was the oversight? Where were you?"

This crisis is the last thing Bush needed in the twilight of his presidency when his Republican party is battling to keep the White House in the Nov-ember 4 election.

The US economy has been on the ropes for months, bordering on recession, and despite security gains in Iraq, the war remains deeply unpopular with the American public.

Bush's approval ratings of around 30 per cent in opinion polls are among the worst of any modern US President near the end of his term.

Surging energy prices, growing joblessness and huge federal deficits have also helped tarnish the public perception of his tenure.

Bush is treading cautiously in the face of growing financial turmoil while his loyalists seek to deflect criticism that his own deregulatory zeal has contributed heavily to it.

'Deeply engaged'

The White House insists that Bush is deeply engaged, though he has delegated direct management of the crisis to his top economic advisers.

He scrapped a political fundraising trip on Thursday and instead hunkered down in the White House where he made a brief appearance - two minutes and four seconds - to assure Americans he was prepared to go beyond the "extraordinary measures" already taken to calm the situation.

It was, however, the first time Bush had commented in public on the matter since Monday.