Sometimes an idea gets repeated so often that we become numb to it. We begin to assume it’s true, even if it’s not.

Case in point: George W. Bush isn’t going to repeat his father’s mistake and appear indifferent to a troubled economy.

This gospel, preached in Washington, D.C., has assumed a validity not entirely warranted. To begin with, it distorts what happened to Bush’s father. Among many political forces at play in 1992 was the widespread perception that the elder Bush failed to understand the anxieties of Americans caught in economic uncertainty.

That proved true. But it wasn’t the case of Bush ignoring the economy in the big sense of the word. He spoke about it frequently. The fact is, Bush’s policies were advanced and defeated by contrasting proposals that gave voice to the everyday concerns of individuals and their aspirations.

Remember when the senior Bush was baffled at the sight of a grocery store scanner? That gave Bill Clinton a crack to pry open. Despite good-ole-boy mannerisms and his taste for pork rinds and Tabasco, Bush was seen as a patrician above the daily struggle.

Today, no matter how many times we hear that his son is doing things differently, he’s not.

In his approach to the economy, George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech last week was an eerie echo of his father’s tone deaf to the anxieties and aspirations of most of the people I know.

Tax cuts for the wealthy were an economic cornerstone of former President Bush’s final State of the Union speech in 1992 and of his son’s first in 2002. Both sought to couch these in populist terms. Both presidents called on Congress to maintain wartime bipartisanship for the sake of trickle-down tax breaks for business with both backing the same reduction in the alternative minimum tax that is supposed to thwart tax shelters. Both called for expanded health care for Americans but in words that seemed perfunctory rather than a priority. Both rose to lofty rhetorical heights in praise of the character of Americans, without ever speaking of the corresponding decline in the character of American business. Both spoke of short-term increases in unemployment benefits.

If anything, this father-son approach to governance seems even more out of touch now.

Enron has torn the scab off a festering social injustice: exposing the fact that business has become as big and corrupt a tyranny as government ever was.

George W. Bush might wish to reduce Enron to nothing more than an example of the need for accounting and pension reforms, just as his father wanted to tinker with the banking regulations to ease a credit crunch, but I believe many Americans view it more expansively. Enron isn’t just a company run amok; it is emblematic of greed, of the folly of wholesale deregulation, of high-flying tycoons whose entitlement to millions makes them only more rapacious, of the distorting power of campaign contributions and lobbying.

The state of the union in 2002 is this: Too many hard-working, decent people realize that they are powerless and aren’t getting a fair shake anymore. You can say the same thing for hard-working, decent businesses that can’t keep up with the unrealistic, and perhaps fraudulent, growth of those that cut corners.

In the past, government was blamed as the heavy-handed instrument that undermined the values of honest work with schemes to redistribute income and institutionalize welfare.

Today, government is wide open to the reverse charge: The values of honest work have been undermined by wheeler-dealers who operate their own income redistribution schemes without public checks and balances.

A decade ago, then-President Bush spoke of the economy and told the nation: “The power of America rests in a stirring but simple idea: that people will do great things if you set them free.”

History and Kenneth Lay proved that this is not always the case.

Former President Bush’s remedy for hard times in 1992 was this: “We must make it easier for people to invest money and create new products, new industries and new jobs. We must clear away the obstacles to growth-high taxes, high regulation, red tape and, yes, wasteful government spending.”

Last week, far from parting company with Dad, his son stuck with the doctrine. Just like his dad, Bush is out of touch with the average person’s economic struggles.