Is a Recession Looming?

— -- The Bush camp is uttering the “R” word, suggesting that if the Texas governor takes the White House any blame for a recession would belong firmly with his predecessor.

ABCNEWS.comDec. 4— It seemed to work well for

George W. Bush in the three presidential debates earlier this fall — lower the bar of expectations and raise the prospects for success.

The Bush camp is now asserting that the nation is on the verge of recession, a claim that ABCNEWS political analyst George Stephanopoulos says is more about politics than the economy.

“You know, the Bush people are really haunted. In 1992, they believed that the economy was coming out of a recession but President Bush was getting no credit for it,” Stephanopoulos said this morning on ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America.

Now, with Bush’s son the Republican candidate, “they don’t want to get caught in a reverse situation, where the economy is getting worse, people don’t know who to blame and [they] blame Bush when he gets [to the White House],” Stephanopoulos said.

The Texas governor and his advisers also anticipate that a weaker economy will make for easier for a Bush administration to enact its economic agenda, Stephanopoulos said.

“They are trying to build support for his tax cut in a recession and also place blame on [the Clinton administration] in case there is a recession,” he added.

‘A Great Number of Options’The White House, naturally, rejects the notion that the next president inherits an economy on the front edge of a recession, an idea offered Sunday by Dick Cheney.

“We understand that Mr. Cheney has a lot of hands-on experience in big-time economic downturns,” White House spokesman Jake Siewert said today in response to a reporter’s question about the Republican vice-presidential candidate’s remarks. “But I don’t think that makes him qualified to assess the state of the economy.”