While we are far from a crisis situation, signs of economic gloom continue to pepper today's news.

And now, the most recent economic report from the state puts hard numbers on the picture: Hawai'i's real economic growth for this year is expected to be less than 1 percent.

And the political response to all of this? Not much, really.

Gov. Linda Lingle has been making speeches on the fundamental soundness of the economy. Lawmakers tinkered around the edges of the economic climate but failed to come up with anything major.

The political explanation for all this is that dramatic steps by our leaders require dramatic conditions. And face it: Hawai'i is not facing anything close to a true economic crisis. Unless we hit bottom, there won't be much game-changing action.

In part, that's because politics is by nature reactive. Anticipatory ideas are admired in the abstract but fail to help people get re-elected. The voters want to know: "What have you done for me lately?" not "What are you doing that might help me in the future?"

Also, the economy does not work on the same cycle as politics. Policy changes that affect the economy take time, often more time than an elected official can afford to waste. The seeds of today's downturn were planted here and abroad years ago, and the basics of our next bounce back are probably moving into place today.

A good example is the sweeping set of changes adopted following Gov. Ben Cayetano's Economic Revitalization Task Force in 1997 in anticipation of the 1998 Legislature and his final year in office. Not all of the task force ideas — proposed in the face of truly bleak economic news — were popular (particularly a nuanced plan to raise the general excise tax that voters simply didn't get). But enough ideas were adopted to make some basic changes in the economic landscape in the Islands.

Against expectations, Cayetano won re-election that year. But it wasn't because of the economic stimulation changes he and the Legislature created. It was almost despite those changes.

It took years for those changes to be felt by the Hawaiian economy, and when the impact occurred (fueled, of course, but outside factors as much as anything we did here at home), the beneficiary was Linda Lingle, who succeeded Cayetano.

Now, if the economy continues to slumber for another year or two, fingers will be pointed at the Lingle administration by those who seek to succeed her. The political fallout of today's economic hiccup, then, will be felt in the next election for governor, where the candidates will promise to repair yesterday's problems tomorrow.

Jerry Burris' column appears Wednesdays in this space. See his blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com/akamaipolitics. Reach him at jrryburris@yahoo.com.