7.8 Percent

“What difference a day makes,” is probably what the campaign of Republican Mitt Romney must be thinking. Romney had less than 24 hours to enjoy his convincing performance against Barack Obama in the first televised debate of the American presidential election. His victory in the duel was essential in altering the campaign’s narrative. This morning, disclosure of the drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent, the lowest it has ever been since Obama arrived at the White House, altered it once again: The economy (and, consequently, jobs) are the main issue of this election, which means that today’s numbers will be a much more important story for the media, and will take precedence over coverage of the aftermath of Wednesday’s debate.

Neither campaign rested after Wednesday; both candidates appeared, with renewed energy, at rallies the following day. Romney took the chance to savor some of the first, candid ravings from the conservative faction, which has, since the beginning of the campaign, doubted the Republican candidate’s credentials. Ironically, they came after Mitt Romney made a sharp left turn to the center, and after the ex-governor gave a speech that goes against the ideas espoused by the more extreme faction of the party. But the post-debate headlines energized the base, who went from being in disbelief to considering that it is possible to defeat the president. A definitive sign that there was, once again, trust in the Republican campaign was that Romney took advantage of the moment to atone himself for his remark about the 47 percent of Americans that don’t pay tax at the federal level (and who, in his reasoning, depend on the state and are thus interested in Obama’s reelection) — his timing didn’t go unnoticed.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, tried to use Romney’s rhetorical victory against him:

“When I got onto the stage last night, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that!”

The Democratic campaign’s new strategy is to turn what Romney said at the debate against what he said in the campaign trail and in his electoral manifesto, and hammer home the idea that, once again, the Republican candidate is telling the Americans what they want to hear to get elected, in true snake oil salesman fashion. After characterizing the Republican as a millionaire that doesn’t care about the middle class and who will rule for the 1 percent, Democrats want to exploit the apparent ideological vacuum and lack of any deep conviction present in Romney, the flip-flopper.

Statistics concerning the drop in unemployment favor the president’s reelection campaign, not only because they divert attention from his disastrous performance in the televised debate, but also because they allow him to counter the Republican argument that his administration’s policies are prolonging the recession and stifling economic growth in the country (and job creation).

The fact that the opposition’s first reaction was questioning the trustworthiness of the Department of Labor, which collects statistics, and accusing the (non-partisan) governmental agency of political manipulation of the numbers is an unmistakable sign of the troubles the Republican campaign faces — yet again haunted by the dissonance and lack of consistency between what it says and reality.