Tepid jobs data set a tone for presidential debate

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney speaks about job num­bers, Fri­day, at Bradley’s Hard­ware in Wolfeboro, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

BEN FELLER, JIM KUHNHENN

Asso­ci­ated Press

PITTSBURGH — Dis­ap­point­ing job growth jolted the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign four months before Elec­tion Day, and the can­di­dates quickly put their vastly dif­fer­ent views on dis­play, under­scor­ing the econ­omy as the cen­tral issue between Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can rival Mitt Romney.

Obama sought con­so­la­tion from hir­ing fig­ures that showed at least some job growth still under way, call­ing them a “step in the right direc­tion” and plead­ing with vot­ers to stick with him. Rom­ney spoke of mis­ery across the nation, warned Obama would do noth­ing but deepen it and addressed a dis­grun­tled mid­dle class by say­ing, “This kick in the gut has got to end.”

Over­all, the stand-pat nature of the new data was not a game-changer in the close pres­i­den­tial con­test — one in which the president’s approval rat­ings hover around or slightly below 50 per­cent and he retains a slight lead, if any, over Romney.

And while no pres­i­dent since the Great Depres­sion has sought re-election with unem­ploy­ment as high as it is now, Obama has proven to be a resilient cam­paigner while Rom­ney has come under con­ser­v­a­tive crit­i­cism, accused of play­ing it too safe and mud­dling his message.

The lack­lus­ter jobs report showed a net of only 80,000 jobs cre­ated in June and an unem­ploy­ment rate unchanged at 8.2 per­cent. The monthly snap­shot has taken on out­sized impor­tance, pro­vid­ing a plain mea­sure by which to judge the pres­i­dent and give Rom­ney fur­ther grounds to attack.

Yet even as the econ­omy dom­i­nates the polit­i­cal land­scape, fall­out from the Supreme Court’s deci­sion on health care and Romney’s shift­ing response to it also con­tin­ues to reverberate.

The pres­i­dent accused Rom­ney of cav­ing in to the pres­sure of con­ser­v­a­tives in his party on the ques­tion of whether the health insur­ance require­ment car­ries a “penalty” or a “tax.” The for­mer gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts had lit­tle to say when pressed about that, turn­ing all atten­tion back to job cre­ation and Obama’s record, the areas where he wants to com­pete and win.

“It’s still tough out there,” Obama con­ceded to a cam­paign crowd in Poland, Ohio, a small town out­side Youngstown. He noted that the pri­vate sec­tor jobs cre­ated in June con­tributed to 4.4 mil­lion new jobs over the past 28 months, includ­ing 500,000 new man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs.

“That’s a step in the right direc­tion,” he said. But he added: “We’ve got to grow the econ­omy even faster, and we have to put even more peo­ple back to work.”

Obama spent two days cam­paign­ing by bus in Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia, hotly con­tested bat­tle­grounds whose mod­est eco­nomic gains he hopes to lever­age into a case for his re-election. And he crit­i­cized Rom­ney for push­ing eco­nomic ideas that, the pres­i­dent said, have been tried with­out suc­cess before.

Rom­ney, speak­ing ahead of the pres­i­dent in New Hamp­shire, used vir­tu­ally the same argu­ment, say­ing Obama rep­re­sents lib­eral poli­cies that have been discredited.

“Amer­i­can fam­i­lies are strug­gling; there’s a lot of mis­ery in Amer­ica today,” he said, inter­rupt­ing his vaca­tion in New Hamp­shire to react to the jobs num­bers. “The president’s poli­cies have not got­ten Amer­ica work­ing again. And the pres­i­dent is going to have to stand up and take respon­si­bil­ity for it.”

Obama, rolling across the land­scape of north­ern Ohio and east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, made his “were-all-in this-together” eco­nomic pitch with the per­sonal touch of a politi­cian. He spoke to a rau­cous group at an ele­men­tary school, stopped by an old fash­ioned bak­ery and exhorted a crowd at an out­door scene in Pitts­burgh where hun­dreds of peo­ple waited for him in scorch­ing heat.

Emer­gency offi­cials said 13 peo­ple at the Pitts­burgh speech were taken to emer­gency rooms for heat-related problems.

In a sad note, an Ohio restau­rant owner who hosted Obama for break­fast became ill and died hours later. The Sum­mit County med­ical examiner’s office in Akron said 70-year-old Josephine “Ann” Har­ris, the pro­pri­etor of Ann’s Place, died Fri­day of nat­ural causes. Obama called her daugh­ter, Wilma Par­sons, with con­do­lences from Air Force One.

Friday’s job­less report came with pub­lic con­fi­dence about the econ­omy already waver­ing. The per­cent­age of peo­ple in a recent Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll who said the econ­omy had improved in the pre­vi­ous month fell below 20 per­cent for the first time since fall. And few said they expected much improve­ment in in the employ­ment rate in the com­ing year.

The jobs report raised new anx­i­eties. The Dow Jones indus­trial aver­age fell 124 points, wip­ing out the measure’s gain for the week. The lib­eral Eco­nomic Pol­icy Insti­tute called the sus­tained high rates of unem­ploy­ment an “ongo­ing, severe cri­sis for the Amer­i­can workforce.”

Another num­ber that was wor­ry­ing the Obama camp Fri­day was the report that Rom­ney had raised more than $100 mil­lion for his cam­paign and for the Repub­li­can Party in June. Rom­ney and the party out­raised Obama and Democ­rats in May.

The Obama cam­paign said it was still tal­ly­ing its June fig­ures. But in an urgent plea, cam­paign man­ager Jim Messina said in an email to sup­port­ers that that if Romney’s fundrais­ing “con­tin­ues at this pace, it could cost us the election.

Despite Obama’s vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion on the econ­omy and Romney’s grow­ing fundrais­ing clout, Rom­ney has not been able to gain sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal advan­tage. The AP poll showed that the pub­lic trusted Obama and Rom­ney in about equal ratios on who would han­dle the econ­omy best, and Rom­ney has yet to sus­tain a lead over Obama in national polls.

Rom­ney has played up his busi­ness back­ground, but polit­i­cal strate­gists believe Obama has man­aged to neu­tral­ize that poten­tial advan­tage by attack­ing Romney’s tenure as head of Bain Cap­i­tal, a pri­vate equity firm.

A num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives have raised anx­ious voices about Romney’s cam­paign, fear­ing that he is jeop­ar­diz­ing his chances of win­ning with a con­fused message.

“I don’t say much to crit­ics,” Rom­ney coun­tered Fri­day, not­ing that he has laid out his eco­nomic vision with a 59-point plan.

Eager to use the weak recov­ery to advan­tage, a pro-Republican group said Fri­day it will spend $25 mil­lion on new TV ads that blame Obama and that call for lower taxes and less reg­u­la­tion. The group, Cross­roads GPS, said the ads will air in nine bat­tle­ground states from July 10 through early August.

At one stop Fri­day, Obama mar­veled at the amount of money that such Republican-allied groups are spending.

“It is alright because I’m tough,” he said. “I’m skinny but I’m tough.”

Friday’s jobs num­bers rep­re­sented a third straight month of weak hir­ing. The sec­ond quar­ter of 2012 aver­aged 75,000 jobs a month, far too few to lower the unem­ploy­ment rate. That slump repeated a three-year cycle where robust job gains early in the year have given way to hir­ing slow­downs by spring or summer.

Obama could face the high­est unem­ploy­ment rate on Elec­tion Day of any pres­i­dent since Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt. But his aides argue that the trend line is more impor­tant than the actual num­ber. Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid in 1980 to Ronald Rea­gan as unem­ploy­ment climbed from 6 per­cent to 7.5 per­cent. George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clin­ton in 1992 as unem­ploy­ment rose from 6.9 per­cent to 7.6 percent.

While Rea­gan faced an unem­ploy­ment rate of 7.4 per­cent in Octo­ber 1984, the rate had been drop­ping since the spring of 1983. He went on to win re-election.

Posted by AP News on Jul 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.