Let The Data Talk.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Campaign '04: Conventional wisdom says President Bush is vulnerable to John Kerry on the economy. It must be true, because the big media keep repeating it. As usual, the reality is something quite different.

We've been genuinely astounded by the amount of misreporting on the economy over the past two years. And it went from bad to worse as the presidential campaign kicked into high gear.

We've made what we think is a strong case for President Bush on foreign policy -- a case that, by itself, suffices to re-elect him. But a case nearly as strong can be made on the economy, despite the propaganda from Kerry spinmeisters and their media mouthpieces.

To hear the Democrats, you'd think this country was still in recession. On the campaign trail they've likened Bush to President Hoover and the Depression -- a comparison that betrays either a basic dishonesty or a sad lack of economic understanding.

Such comments can easily be shot down for the foolishness they are. Yet the media, ever eager to display their ignorance, repeat them as if they're credible. They're not.

The real record shows Bush entered the White House in 2001 after a record meltdown in the stock market, with the economy already in recession and job growth in a tailspin. A few short months into his tenure, a vicious foe attacked the U.S., killing some 3,000 people. A global war ensued. Oil prices more than doubled.

Given such a scenario, a Hoover-like implosion might have happened. But it didn't. Bush's three big tax cuts, totaling $1.8 trillion, pulled the economy out of its rut and put it back on the fast track.