US Features

ANALYSIS: Embattled Obama markets jobs measure to Congress, voters

By Frank Fuhrig Sep 9, 2011, 8:03 GMT

President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of the United States Congress on the subject of job creation on Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, on 08 September 2011. EPA/KEVIN LAMARQUE

Washington - The numbers are against Barack Obama as he prepares a run for re-election next year.

Since World War II, only one US president has been returned to office with the unemployment rate above 6 per cent. That exception, Ronald Reagan, won in 1984 amid a jobless rate of 7.2 per cent, but with a roaring economy that had seen unemployment fall from 10.2 per cent just 18 months earlier.

The US unemployment rate was 9.1 per cent in August, with no job growth for the month, according to government data.

So Obama walked into a joint session of Congress Thursday to demand a 450-billion-dollar measure - which he dubbed the American Jobs Act - to spur hiring and 'jolt' the lagging economy.

He tackled the political question in the opening seconds: 'This past week, reporters have been asking 'What will this speech mean for the president? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls and the next election?' But the millions of Americans who are watching right now - they don't care about politics. They have real life concerns.'

Job market forecasts are gloomy for years to come, with no serious economists expecting meaningful improvement before November 2012, much less the kind of upswing that would put Obama close to modern precedents for re-election.

Even in the White House, Obama's own Office of Management and Budget issued a revised forecast on September 1 that unemployment would hover at 9 per cent through 2012 before dropping to 8.5 per cent by 2013.

Official unemployment has been above 8 per cent since Obama took office in the midst of an economic meltdown in January 2009, and people unemployed more than six months now make up more than 40 per cent of those looking for work.

The ranks of the truly jobless are widely believed to be at least a few percentage points higher than the current rate indicates, as people who become discouraged and stop looking are not counted in the government's household survey.

The lousy jobs climate has fuelled rampant mortgage defaults, and for people working, fear has depressed consumer spending.

'Even taking into account the many financial pressures they face, households seem exceptionally cautious,' Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a business group earlier Thursday in Minnesota. 'Indeed, readings on consumer confidence have fallen substantially in recent months as people have become more pessimistic about both economic conditions and their own financial prospects.'

Obama said his proposals would 'provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services.'

'You should pass this jobs plan right away,' he told Congress.

Obama's approval rating is 43 per cent, the lowest of his presidency, according to the realclearpolitcs.com average of recent national polls. The average approval for Congress is 12 per cent, plummeting since a summer-long standoff between Obama and the Republican House over the need to raise the national debt cap.

For an unpopular Democratic president with a troublesome Congress, there is a well-worn path to re-election.

Harry Truman, who was vice president when Franklin Roosevelt died in office in 1945, saw his Democrats lose control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections, just as Obama saw Republicans capture the House of Representatives 10 months ago.

In 1948, Truman was seen as weak and unlikely to win. That summer, he addressed Congress on the need to act to prevent 'another Great Depression,' and within weeks excoriated the Republicans, repeating over and over that they had 'failed to act' on a long list of his economic proposals.

Three months later, Truman won one of the closest presidential elections in US history.

Fellow Democrat Bill Clinton's re-election looked sunk, too, when Republicans scored a historic victory in 1994 midterm elections, only for the president to win easily in 1996 by positioning himself as a counterweight to the conservative legislature.

In Thursday's speech, Obama called on Congress to combat 'an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbours jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse.' He told legislators at least 15 times, in mostly similar words, to 'pass this jobs bill.'

'There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation,' he said.

Obama could now be poised, like Truman, to give voters a status report next year, detailing how the Republican House 'failed to act' on proposal after proposal.

Unlike Obama, his predecessors had numbers on their side. Clinton was re-elected with unemployment at 5.2 per cent. When Truman won the vote in November 1948, the jobless rate was 3.8 per cent.