Fix for economy a partisan dividing line

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In the ideological gulf that divides the Democratic and Republican presidential front-runners on the issues, the economy looms largest of all.

With the economy showing signs of a significant and perhaps lengthy slowdown because of the subprime mortgage and credit crises, voters' concern about their own economic future "is now as high as it has been in about a year and a half," the Gallup Poll reported last month.

And there are even signs the economy's weakness is forcing some candidates to recalibrate their economic proposals. A senior economic adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would delay her plan to raise taxes on people in the two highest income brackets because of the severity of the economy's decline.

"She just thinks we are at a point where we are bordering on a recession, and you want to do everything you can to inject demand into the economy right now," said Gene Sperling, who also served as President Bill Clinton's national economic adviser.

As the Iraq war has dropped off the front pages after the decline in the levels of violence there, political and economic strategists say that major economic issues, from taxes to jobs to trade, will dominate the presidential-campaign debate in the weeks and months to come.

"With health care and energy costs skyrocketing, wages stagnating, and unemployment at its highest rate in years, American families have been feeling the strain Republicans have put on their pocketbooks. It's no surprise, then, that the economy is now the top issue for both Democratic and Republican voters," the Democratic National Committee said last week in a broadside on the Bush administration's handling of the economy.

And Republican political and economic strategists readily admit that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, and that will pose a major political challenge for Republicans.

"If it's not a recession, it's going to feel like one," said David Smick, a Republican economic consultant who advises the White House and global business leaders.

"The problem for Republicans is the lag time. It's going to take eight months for the stimulus effect to take hold, which means the economy will be improving but it won't be in the data until later this year," he said.

But a survey of the issues that separate the two major parties, and in some cases their candidates, shows that vast differences remain in their approach to bedrock economic issues that will affect most Americans.