WASHINGTON — The drop in unemployment Friday looks like a job-security bonus for President Barack Obama as well, undercutting Republicans’ assertions that his economic policies have failed. The president himself heralded the news with his most confident assessment yet.
“We’re starting to rebound,” he said. “We’re moving in the right direction.”
It’s still 10 months until Election Day. Although the narrative is positive for Obama now, the economy could still turn sour again. The Republicans who want his job were giving him no credit Friday, and Rick Santorum even suggested hiring was improving because business owners figured Obama was on his way out.
But December’s 8.5 percent jobless rate — down from 8.7 in November and 9 percent in October — gives Obama a positive story line through the Republican presidential primaries in January and underscores other bright spots emerging on the economic scene for his yearlong fight for re-election.
As Obama’s potential rivals fight their way toward the Republican nomination by trying to distinguish themselves from one another and from Obama, the news on jobs dilutes a central theme of their candidacies — that Obama has failed to turn the economy around.
More Americans now expect the economy to improve this year than to get worse, according to a recent Associated Press-GfK poll. At the same time, Obama is being held more accountable for what happens.
Obama has been loath to crow about any positive economic indicators, and White House economists have stressed they do not read much into a single month’s report.
So it was notable Friday that the president, while offering the customary cautions, could barely contain his optimism. Three times during brief remarks to staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau he said the economy or the country was “moving in the right direction.”
“A lot of families are still having a tough time. A lot of small businesses are still having a tough time,” he said. “But we’re starting to rebound. We’re moving in the right direction. We have made real progress.”
Still, Obama is likely to face the highest unemployment rate on Election Day of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. A key to his re-election will be whether the economy can sustain the encouraging hiring trend. Time and again, David Axelrod, his top political adviser, has said the actual unemployment number is not as important as the trajectory.
Consider Jimmy Carter, who lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan as unemployment climbed from 6 percent in October 1979 to 7.5 percent in October of the 1980 election year. Likewise, George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992 in the midst of rising unemployment, which went from 6.9 percent in September 1991 to 7.6 percent in September 1992.
Reagan managed to get re-elected in 1984 even though unemployment stood at 7.4 percent in October of that year. The difference was that his unemployment trend line had been dropping since the spring of 1983.
For Obama, the positive trend is hardly pure economic sunshine.
While employers added 200,000 in December, economists say that at that pace it would take about seven years to return the unemployment rate to pre-recession levels. And the number is still higher than when Obama took office.
What’s more, the economy appeared to be on the rebound last spring only to tumble.
“The public has seen green shoots before that haven’t proved to be good omens of things to come,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “This has to keep going before it pays political dividends.”
Little donation, big lunch
In a sort of power lunch for the not-so-powerful, President Barack Obama broke bread Friday with four winners of a contest for people who give to his campaign in small amounts.The suggested donation to enter the drawing: $3.
The winners, who included Val Grossmann, a postal worker from Westminister, gathered at Scion, a restaurant serving trendy, Asian- inspired cuisine in Washington.
The Obama re-election campaign has offered the meals with the president, first lady and vice president to boost online contributions.
Obama’s campaign said the other members of the lunch bunch were Kathie Toigo, an early-childhood special-needs teacher from Yerington, Nev.; Bill Blackwelder, an Afghanistan war veteran from Fayetteville, N.C.; and Scott Zoebisch, a firefighter from Atlanta.
Donors typically give thousands of dollars to attend Obama’s fundraising events.
The Associated Press
