President Obama: Muslim and Job Killer?
I respect those who vote Republican, too.
But I don't think most of the recent
job losses are the fault of Mr. Obama.
It's a slow day in education. So I've been checking out a few Facebook pages; and I notice a certain degree of unrest among conservative friends--and I want them to be happy.
I like to check out Governor John Kasich's wall, for example, and today he's highlighting his success bringing jobs back to Ohio and supporters are calling President Obama an illegal alien, a polecat, a Muslim, and just about everything except a Mennonite.
President Obama, they say, is a job exterminator.
I love my friends, conservative, Tea Partier, libertarian, liberal, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jew alike. I think God loves Mitt Romney and Mormons and Sarah Palin and atheists, too.
When I checked the Romney Facebook page I saw more complaints about unemployment--and all of those complaints aimed at the "Kenyan" in the White House. So I decided to do what any liberal might do. I decided to see if I could find a simple graph or two.
Now I’m trying to think like a conservative. If we go back to January 1981, the unemployment rate in the United States was 7.5%. I think fair-minded individuals might remember that the economy was in terrible condition at that time. But job losses soared while President Reagan was in office, the unemployment rate peaking at 10.8% in November 1982.
In fact, it took Mr. Reagan his entire first term to reduce unemployment, so that by January 1985, the rate had fallen again to 7.3%, a stunning recovery of +.2% in four years.
By the time he left office, however, he had “tamed” the problem, reducing unemployment to 5.4% (January 1989). In other words, the last great Republican president saw unemployment balloon by 3.3% and then drop, in the end, by 2.1% over eight years.
MR. REAGAN 1981-1989): 2.1% NET JOBS IMPROVEMENT.
Under President George H. W. Bush, unemployment surged again, to 7.8% in the summer of 1992. By January 1993, when Bill Clinton took office, the level had fallen to 7.3%. Still, we lost almost all the ground made up under Mr. Reagan. Again, fair-minded people might argue that Mr. Bush had bad luck and that the economy was turning as he left office.
BUSH 41 (1989-1993): -1.9% DECLINE IN U.S. EMPLOYMENT.
During President Clinton’s two terms in office, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2% in January 2001. We even had a budget surplus—something every Republican born since 1919 now claims he really, really, really, and I mean really, likes.
CLINTON'S TIME IN OFFICE (INTERNS ADMITTEDLY NOT ALWAYS SAFE) (1993-2001): 3.1% IMPROVEMENT.
George W. Bush came next, saw unemployment spike to more than 6%, recovered, saw it fall to 4.4%, and then, Bush Tax Cuts and all, the economy tanked in 2008. By the time Barrack Obama took office the unemployment rate was 7.8%.
GEORGE W. BUSH (2001-2009): -3.6% DECLINE IN EMPLOYMENT.
I doubt anyone, even Dale Robertson, the founder of the Tea Party Movement, would try to claim that President Obama inherited a healthy economy, or a federal budget that was even close to balancing. Leaving that deficit problem aside, however, the unemployment rate rose to 10% in October 2009, similar to but not as terrible as the rise during President Reagan’s first four years in the Oval Office.
As of March 2012, the rate has dropped once more to 8.2%, a figure lower than at any time since February 2009, when Mr. Obama had been in office less than two weeks. So, even if you’re a Republican and want to claim that all job losses since the moving van brought Sasha and Malia's books and dolls to the White House are the fault of the current chief executive, you might have to wonder, “Isn’t everything we’re going to have to do from now to the next election and probably deep into the next administration to fix the jobs problem really just undoing damage done by a previous president?
OBAMA IN OFFICE (JANUARY 20, 2009 to present): -.4%, IF WE START WITH JANUARY FIGURES.
If you're a Republican, and cut him even the slightest break, and start with February, 2009, Mr. Obama is ALREADY IN +.1 TERRITORY. One more tenth of a percent and he equals the first term success of the paladin of conservatives everywhere, the almost-sainted Mr. Reagan.
Again, all the right wing has to do, if they don't mind facing reality, would be to check the graphs.
