Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
RICHFIELD, Ohio, Sept. 1 — Since the last time President Bush addressed a Labor Day picnic ? with carpenters in Pennsylvania ? the economy has lost 700,000 jobs, most of them in manufacturing.
…"Things are getting better," Mr. Bush told a subdued crowd here.
Orders for goods are coming back to the country's factories, the president said, and productivity is on the rise ? though he acknowledged that was one reason jobs were disappearing.
…Mr. Bush's only new announcement today, the traditional start of campaign season in election years, was the creation of an assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing, a step clearly intended to reinforce his commitment to bringing back blue-collar jobs.
Yet the creation of the position is the kind of action that Republicans, when they were out of office, used to criticize.
…Mr. Bush said that in creating the post, he would address head-on the loss of what he said were "thousands of manufacturing jobs" in recent years.
In fact, around 3 million jobs have been lost since Mr. Bush took office, about 2.5 million of them in manufacturing.
Mr. Bush never explicitly mentioned China, but when he said much of the job loss was "because production moved overseas," he appeared to be referring to China and other low-cost countries.
China has emerged in this campaign in essentially the same role that Japan played when the first President Bush entered his ill-fated re-election campaign in 1992
…Mr. Bush did not say what the duties of the new assistant secretary would be other than to focus "on the needs of manufacturers," nor did he say when he intended to nominate one.