GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney predictably jumped all over the jobs report for July which saw joblessness tick up slightly. He called it a hammer blow for the middle-class. Certainly much has been made of the fact that no president has won reelection since World War II with the jobless rate above 8 percent. That and the report seemed to spell bad news for President Obama. But it's anything but that. The report also showed a jump in the number of jobs for the month. Some non-partisan economists and financial experts predict a slow but steady trend upward in the job numbers over the next few months. That's potentially a plus for Obama's reelection.
But it's not strictly good or bad job numbers that pretty much determine whether sitting presidents will continue to sit in the Oval Office or will be sent packing by voters. It's the timing of the positive or negative numbers. In a look at how six of eight presidents fared since 1948 when the economy hit the skids or appeared to skid, the scorecard for presidents winning and losing because of economic misery is a draw. Three incumbents were beaten and three incumbents beat back their challengers. It came down to whether voters really perceived that their economic plight would stay the same, or get worse, if the incumbent got another four years in the Oval Office.
The winners and losers have been both Republican and Democratic presidents. They have won and lost even when there was widespread public unease over the economy and many voters believed things wouldn't get any better. The presidents who won had to do and have two crucial things in the face of rising unemployment, recession, inflation, and public grumbles. One is that the economy had to improve or appear to improve immediately before the election. And they had to assure a majority of voters that things would and could get better with them if they stayed in the White House and their opponent couldn't do any better. Romney and Obama understand that the battle is not so much with the job numbers and the economy's performance, since the numbers can be spun for and against the incumbent. Obama must drive home the notion with voters that things are and will get better under him in the next four years. Romney's single-minded aim is convince voters that they won't. Incumbents and their challengers have played the dance around the economic numbers and voter perceptions repeatedly with mixed results.
Presidents Gerald Ford and Bush Sr. lost the dance. The combination of real and voter perceived economic woe helped sink both of them. In Carter's case, it helped and hurt. It helped him win when the economy went bad for Ford in 1976. Carter played up that fact and won a narrow victory over Ford. Voters must perceive that the economy will get worse under the incumbent and the challenger has to reinforce public fears that things will get worse.
But four years later, GOP presidential challenger Ronald Reagan turned the tables on Carter. With interest rates soaring , home prices escalating, high unemployment, and a seeming clueless Carter on how to halt the slide, Reagan was able to nail Carter with the enduring question "Are you better off than you were four years ago" during their debate on October 28, 1980. Reagan won in a near landslide. The exact reverse was true for Reagan and Bill Clinton. Reagan's supply side economics and big tax cuts were credited with igniting a mid-1980s economic boom. Clinton's tax hike, deficit reduction program, and investment stimulus program, was credited with turning a record deficit into a record surplus and adding millions of new jobs to the rolls.
As Reagan's vice president, Bush Sr. benefited from his economic policies. In 1988, he won the election. Four years later, when things turned sour he lost. It was not just a bad economy but at the point the economy turns bad in the life of the administration, and the public perception that things will get better or worse. The downturn for Bush Sr. came during the last two years of his term. The last thing that an incumbent wants is for voters to go to the polls with fear and doubt fresh in their minds about the economy.
Bush Sr.'s history did not repeat itself with George W. Bush in the 2004 election. Unemployment was high, and economic growth, as Democrats happily noted, was slower than during Clinton's second term. But the Clinton record was the stuff of envy and was impossibly hard to match. Bush didn't have too. There was just enough economic growth and a slightly downward trend in overall unemployment during the last two years of Bush's first term, to largely mute any Democratic attacks on him for a miserable economy.
Bush took the cue and solemnly pledged the economy would grow even more with his tax cuts, downsizing of government spending, and stepped up drive to deregulate in his second term. If the economic negatives had hit harder in Bush's last two years, as it did with his father, this could have spelled the same disaster for him as it did for Bush Sr.
The proverbial "it's the economy, stupid" is a hard fact of presidential elections. But history has shown it can work for or against sitting presidents depending on when voters see the economy as improving or failing. That can help or hurt President Obama.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
During August, The Hutchinson Report will donate proceeds from each column to the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. The proceeds will go to the organization's Make a Dream Come True Fund Drive. I urge you to join the Hutchinson Report in giving. For more information, go to http://www.laupr.org/.
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Can someone tell me where the success was?
1. US labor costs many many times as much as Foreign Labor according to the DOL website:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ForeignLabor/ichccpwsuppt01.txt
2. US Labor costs are in addition to the recently added cost of Extended Unemployment Benefits, National Healthcare Reform, existing and proposed new environmental laws, plus multiple fold increased cost of electrical energy that is generated in the USA in compliance with US EPA regulations makes doing business in the USA less competitive in the Market place for jobs as those costs are added to US company payroll costs.
Those costs are hindering US businesses that are competing for manufacturing jobs for US citizens in the USA instead of businesses relocating or creating those jobs to foreign nations.
3. The National Healthcare Reform cost is going to make the USA even less competitive in the Market place as that costs is added to US company payroll costs and preventing the location of any new manufacturing jobs into the USA, and/or preventing the keeping of existing US jobs in the USA.
4. The increasing cost of compliance with existing and proposed new environmental laws is making the USA even less competitive in the Market place that is competing for locating new manufacturing jobs into the USA, and/or keeping existing US jobs in the USA.
Only the GREEDY private sector businesses and GREEDY corporations CREATE real JOBS, and not taxpayer funded/paid JOBS, for US citizens to work and to create wealth for these US corporations and for US businessmen so that the nation can TAX this wealth in order to pay for government activities.
The first FREE TRADE AGREEMENT with a third world nation that economically required that US businesses send their US jobs overseas was NAFTA which was signed by President Clinton.
Maybe President Obama should have the US Congress create legislation to repeal President Clinton's NAFTA, GATT, WTO, MFN trade with China, Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, H-1b visas, and all of his other similar laws that ECONOMICALLY REQUIRED US businesses to relocate to foreign nations.
Maybe President Obama should have the US Congress create legislation to repeal George W. Bush’s 14 additional FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS (with Jordan, Morocco, and other young democracies of Central America).
Maybe President Obama should have the US Congress create legislation to repeal his own multiple new FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS with Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Peru plus several other Asian and South American nations.
The Answer is YES, PROVIDED he has the full support of the Governors, the US House of Representatives and the Senate, which the Republican are doing everything they can to prevent happening.
The USA Chamber of Commerce and the Christian Coalitions are waging WAR on the President because he is for the poor, the gays, the Veterans, the Native American, the unions, and the working class of America, and although he has done much for the business community and the churches, he is being 'pictured' as anti-american and a socialist, neither of which is remotely true.
The President is a Christian that believes in Human Rights, and the power of Personal Choice, and that unless there is direct harm to others, the others should allow Personal Choice, and butt out of everyone else's business..
The President believes in the For-Profit, Free-Enterprise system, but has seen the out of control fraud, corruption, pollution, and theft of some of the nation's corporations and is doing what he can to stop it, which is what we all should want.
The President has presented Jobs Bills that have in the past proven to work, but each has been purposely destroyed or lied about by some, which is shameful...
Nothing within the 20 or so House of Representative's Job agenda bills contained anything to do with creating jobs. That is my opinion after reading these 'destructive pieces of garbage' papers, and I am not alone, many news agencies, economist, scholars, and other professionals have come to the same conclusion... The report was on HP and other Internet sites about two weeks ago.
I would also like someone to take each one filibustered by McConnell and give a realistic jobs report had McConnell and his filibuster posse, not filibustered but helped Obama, help this country. in the last 4 years.
Filibustering to "make sure Obama is a one-term President" as McConnell stated, shows what a callous and anti-American the Republican party is. They are dealing in human misery of millions of Americans, and they don't care.
I would like to see "what might have been" had Republicans not crashed the economy to start with...in the decade of their spending spree of Bush and themselves. Two wars unfunded, 3 tax breaks for the rich, not funded and how those sprees were under the table and to keep from the people, the true costs.
I just want to see a true journalist who would add all of this up and present for review for the American people, so they might send a new Congress who would work for those who need a job and a Congress that was not a product for the rich, and understands that the middle class is not being well served.
Governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey 'ripped off' the Obama Administration and now are 'claiming' that they are great governors as they 'balanced' their state's budgets, something the Democrats could not do; such lies will come back to haunt them, as the American Public is not that ignorant to what is really happening, and knows from the Reagan and Bush Sr experiences, that electing another Republican will only result in more misery, more taxes, bigger government, more wars, more mic, more corruption and fraud, and less benefits for the average working American that created the wealth of this country...
America WAKE UP...
233,000: Jobs added in the auto industry since June 2009—the most growth in a decade
100%: The percent of investment in plants and equipment that businesses could expense under a tax cut extension President Obama proposed, which would spur investment in the United States
18%: Tax deduction President Obama has proposed for domestic advanced manufacturing technologies—which would double the current 9 percent deduction
20%: Income tax credit the President has proposed providing to companies on expenses related to moving operations back to the United States
Today, the Big Three (Chrysler, GM, and Ford) are all profitable for the first time in years, adding shifts and facilities across the country. The industry has added 230,000 jobs since June 2009, and GM is once again the top-selling automaker in the world—posting its largest-ever annual profit in 2011.
42 consecutive months of 8%+ unemployment (BO has only been in office 42 months - this will grow higher).
316,000 fewer payroll jobs today than when BO took office - 3.5 years into his term, and he has negative job growth.
July reported 163,000 seasonally adjusted jobs added - but the nonseasonally adjusted number was a loss of 1.204 million.
The economy is slowing - GDP was 2% in the first quarter - 1.5% in the 2nd quarter.
Anyway you look at it - BO has been a failure when it comes to jobs and the economy.
And that is with government jobs flat or decreasing. Get rid of this silly idea from Republicans that you shouldn't do infrastructure repairs during a recession and we would be having a lot more growth. But the Republicans fillibuster every jobs bill. In the midst of record droughts they fillibuster the farm bill and just leave town without doing anything about it.