The Seven (and Eight-Tenths) Percent Solution

There was good news in the September 2012 unemployment rate announced yesterday, and I'm sure President Obama is disappointed that, even if he had done well in this past Wednesday's debate with Mitt Romney, he couldn't have capitalized on the news then, as it came out too late for that.  But it did provide him with a badly needed boost after Romney lied his way through the debate into making himself a plausible alternative in the election.

The unemployment rate went down to 7.8 percent, with 114,000 new jobs added, and the number of jobs added for July and August were revised upward.  Although the rate drop from 8.1 percent in August is statistically insignificant, the fact that it got under eight percent for the first time since Obama took office in January 2009 was a psychological lift for the President, the Democrats, and, for that matter, the nation.  It's not as good as it should be, but it gives Obama the liberty to argue that the country is moving in the right direction.

For Republicans, the 7.8 percent rate gave them an opportunity not to be psychologically buoyed but to just be psycho.  Several Republican politicians and GOP-friendly commentators and businessmen have suggested that the Bureau of Labor Statistics  (BLS), which compiles the official employment data, manipulated the numbers to make the President look good.  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis  said this was ridiculous, pointing out - like other thinking people have - that the BLS is staffed with nonpartisan professional statisticians who zealously guard the results of their monthly job figures and ensure that no one can see them before they're officially reported at 8:30 AM Eastern time on the first Friday of the month - except the President, who can't tell anyone before the appointed release of the data.  The BLS has so many employees, it would be impossible for any of them to fudge data and get away with it.  (Nixon couldn't control the BLS during his Presidency; Reagan dismissed high unemployment rates during his first term by suggesting that statisticians had "a funny way of counting."  So Republican attacks on the BLS are, well, B.S.)        

The only Republican who seems to accept the data as legitimate is Mitt Romney, and he of course interprets the findings differently, suggesting that 7.8 percent isn't good enough.  Well, it isn't, as I already noted.  But the policies ol' Willard proposes, contrary to what you may have heard from him in the debate, would have made the employment situation far worse had they been implemented already.  Obama, in addition to having fresh ammo from Romney's lies in the first debate, has this to crow about when he arrives at Hofstra University on Long Island for the second debate.  Let's hope the Nielsen ratings for the second debate are at least as high as they were for the first one.  If they're not, President Obama may not reach the people he needs to reach in spelling out a vision for the next four years.  You usually don't get a second chance at a first impression.