Create Jobs Or Lose the Election

President Obama is under the gun. Americans just don’t trust him to lead the nation out of its valley of tears. His only chance of being re-elected hinges on proving that he can revive the U.S. economy. The nation is sliding toward a one-issue election.

It had never happened before: The president of the United States wanted to address Congress, but the speaker of the House blew him off like some insolent favor-seeker. Obama has to wait before he can inform congressmen returning from their summer break of his plans for reviving America’s economy and bringing down the unemployment figures.

The squabble over the scheduling of that speech says volumes — first, about the way politics is practiced in America (rudely and brutally) and then about Obama’s diminished authority. The president was once again treated mercilessly. The episode demonstrated unequivocally that America’s presidential election had begun a good year prior to the actual opening of the polls.

It will be waged over one issue only. To use the phrase that once helped Bill Clinton win the White House, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The condition of America’s economy will determine the outcome of the 2012 election. The battle over debt and against deficit spending that had nearly brought America into crisis last summer hasn’t been forgotten, but it has been put on the back burner.

Up to Election Day, it will all be about one thing: jobs. If Obama can demonstrate that he can create jobs and get the economy moving again, then he has a chance at a second term. But if the economy continues to limp along, American voters will choose his Republican challenger, regardless of whom that might be. The simple logic will be that Obama had his chance and didn’t use it. Now it’s someone else’s turn. That was the logic behind Bill Clinton’s election victory and that’s also how Ronald Reagan triumphed over the hapless Jimmy Carter.

Lose like Carter

If the election were held today, Obama would lose just like Jimmy Carter. The negative public mood means he has a lot of work to do. Just like Carter, the last Democratic president to be turned out of the White House after just one term, Obama is saddled with a serious crisis of confidence: Americans simply don’t think Obama has what it takes to lead America out of its valley of tears. They don’t believe that he is capable of putting through the conditions necessary to create new jobs in the face of stubborn congressional opposition.

So Obama needs something to change that mood. That’s why he is bent on taking back the momentum with a jobs program. And the Republicans will do everything they can to make sure he fails. That’s why Obama will employ a new two-pronged strategy. First, he will introduce a series of measures — from tax credits for new job creation to school renovation programs — to show that he is on the side of the unemployed. That’s also the reason he took on an economist with expertise in job creation as his new chief adviser. With his help, Obama will be able to propose measures the Republicans themselves had proposed (tax credits) or ones they can’t realistically refuse (school renovation projects).

If this strategy fails to put sufficient pressure on Republicans, phase two will begin: If the right wing opposes Obama’s proposals and prevents them from being enacted because of their congressional majority, then Obama will take his case directly to the public. The (decisive) Independent voters will see that Obama is seriously trying to solve the crisis, while Republicans are not. There’s a historical precedent for this strategy: Over 50 years ago, Democratic President Harry Truman scored a surprise victory in his re-election bid by successfully blaming obstructive Republicans for the failing economy.