Jobless Rate Falls to 8.3%, Altering Face of Campaign
February 3, 2012
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — The burst of job growth in January gives President Obama a fresh — but tricky — opportunity to revise the grim economic narrative of his presidency while offering Mitt Romney a choice: embrace a new optimism or campaign against a sinking economy even as it shows signs of turning around.
The Labor Department reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had fallen all the way back to the level of President Obama’s first full month in office, to 8.3 percent, from a high of 10 percent in late 2009. Yet unemployment also remains higher than it has been for any presidential election since the Great Depression.
Those dueling realities — an improving economy that remains very weak — create serious risks for the top political advisers to President Obama and Mr. Romney as they begin to grapple with the impact of Friday’s report. The image of an overly optimistic president could feel discordant and disconnected to voters who are still struggling with unemployment and foreclosures. For Mr. Romney, the improving economy puts at risk his central message as the business executive who can fix a stalled economy...
Mr. Romney — the Republican front-runner, whom White House officials view as their likely opponent — also faces the danger of looking oddly out of step if he presses ahead, as he did on Friday, with his accusation that Mr. Obama had made the recession worse.
“This recovery has been slower than it should have been. People have been suffering for longer than they should have had to suffer,” Mr. Romney said, at a supply company in Sparks, Nev., before Saturday’s caucus in that state. “Will it get better? I think it’ll get better,” he added. “But this president has not helped the process. He’s hurt it.”
Mr. Romney’s aides offered few signals on Friday that he was preparing to abandon his line of attack. Top advisers said that any declaration of economic victory by Mr. Obama would be received poorly in places like Nevada, where unemployment remains above 13 percent.
Mr. Romney has based much of his campaign around attacks on Mr. Obama’s economic record and on the promise that, as someone who understands the private sector, Mr. Romney can do better.
When he announced his campaign at a farm in New Hampshire in June, he sounded many of the same overall themes that Bill Clinton did when running against George H. W. Bush in 1991: the president has failed, and somebody else deserves a chance.
Having beaten Newt Gingrich and his other rivals soundly in the Florida primary on Tuesday, Mr. Romney has returned to talking mostly about Mr. Obama.
Senior advisers to Mr. Romney said he would continue to argue that the economy should be far better than it is. Regardless of the economy, the advisers said, Mr. Obama will not be able to run away from criticism about the size of the federal government and the nation’s soaring debt.
“Voters remain worried that this slow rate of economic growth could become the new normal with Obama at the helm,” said Kevin Madden, an adviser to Mr. Romney. “Also, President Obama’s spending policies have racked up record deficits, and his big government regulatory approach has stunted growth in the business sector.”
Mr. Romney may have little choice but to stick with Plan A. Events could still change between now and November, but most Americans continue to hold generally positive views of Mr. Obama personally. The president has also had several big foreign policy successes, including the killing of Osama bin Laden.
White House officials say the president is prepared to counter the attacks from Mr. Romney and Capitol Hill with the evidence of a slow but sustained turnaround that has added nearly as many jobs in the last two years as were lost in the first few months of Mr. Obama’s administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/politics/improved-job-picture-poses-risks-to-obama-and-romney.html
