Bush Pins the Blame For '92 Election Loss On Alan Greenspan
WASHINGTON -- Former President Bush said in a television interview that he blames Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for his 1992 defeat.</br></br>"I think that if the interest rates had been lowered more dramatically that I would have been re-elected president because the [economic] recovery that we were in would have been more visible," Mr. Bush told interviewer David Frost. "I reappointed him, and he disappointed me."</br></br>Mr. Bush's economic advisers, particularly Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, were critical of the Greenspan Fed's reluctance to cut interest rates more rapidly during the recession of 1990-91 and the sluggish recovery that followed.</br></br>Mr. Greenspan, a Republican, was appointed by President Reagan in 1987, and nominated for another term in July 1991 by Mr. Bush, partly because he couldn't find an acceptable alternative. He was reappointed by President Clinton to a term that ends in 2000.</br></br>A spokesman for Mr. Greenspan declined to comment.