Romney's Misleading and Irresponsible Jobs Speech

What can you make out of this graph? "Red's bad", "the big red bar is the worst", and Obama's name is above the big red bar, "so it must be his fault". This is likely the inference that Romney's camp would like you to come away with, since the rest of the graph is too confusing with which to do much. Romney attempts to show that periods of downturn are followed by periods of job growth, lumping the downturn into multiple years. However, at the end of his graph, which is lumped into 2007-2009, the entire thing is glibly labeled "Obama's Recovery". How can recovery be lumped into exactly the same time frame as the recession? Doesn't one happen first, and the other happen in response? Finally, and this is perhaps what has most people fired up about his visual aid, Obama's Recovery is indicated over the entire 2007-2009 timeframe...insinuating that Obama is responsible for two years of recession and legislative job growth that happened before he even became President. This is exactly the kind of mischaracterization which makes it so difficult for people to look at conservative numbers and take them at face value.

Jason Linkins, of the Huffington Post, accuses Romney of even mischaracterizing the recession itself. "Romney basically asserts," writes Linkins, "that the 'Post-recession periods of the past have been marked by dramatic increases in employment' as if this is just the natural after-effect of having a recession." Romney notes in his speech that, "Even the relatively shallow recessions of 1990-'91 and 2001 were followed by significant job growth. " The difference here, and you can see it plainly in the suspect graph, is that the 2008 recession was not a shallow recession. In fact, it was a completely different kind of recession to all of the previous ones depicted. It was a massive economic recession, rather than the result of simple burst bubble or, as Linkins points out, the result of monetary policies implemented by the Federal Reserve. For Romney to lump the present recession in with others, and to insinuate that if job growth isn't spiking like it did after previous recession, is an unethical misrepresentation.

Mitt Romney is clearly attacking Obama's record of job growth, speaking from the perspective of the party that, to a large extent, has obstructed that growth. Republican filibuster has become the primary tactic by which legislation is hampered in the Senate, more rule than exception, and the House Republicans have famously blocked and voted down any legislation introduced via White House initiatives. Even traditionally Republican policies, like the 2% payroll tax cut that Obama has proposed as part of his jobs stimulus, has been roundly dismissed by Republicans as "not stimulative enough". What is Obama to do with this kind of Catch-22? Essentially, he has to convince enough of the congressional Republicans to stop playing party politics, and to get on board with policies that will stimulate real job growth. As Linkins reflects, "we're living in an era where it's perfectly fine to threaten default in order to take $4 trillion and counting out of the economy," which is not a climate in which real legislative progress is made. However, acknowledging that Republicans have co-authored our weak recovery does little to assuage the millions of unemployed and struggling Americans that are the real bottom line of this recession.