Romney Won the Debate, Obama Won the Economy

As I’m sure you know, President Barack Obama lost last week’s debate to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

He didn’t have any huge flubs or missteps, but at times he seemed as though he would rather be anywhere but onstage.

Romney, on the other hand, went to the debate ready to strike — and strike he did.
He was energetic and assertive, and that enthusiasm seemed even more intense when standing beside the president and his lackluster performance.

The day after the debates, Romney’s campaign was visibly more energetic and confident than usual.

Now that they had the solid momentum of a debate victory to work with for a while, Romney was poised to take full advantage of it.

The campaign wanted to take full charge of this energy and transform the candidate’s performance into better poll numbers and more votes in November.

On Friday, the number of jobs created number for September were released, and they effectively eliminated a crucial and important line of attack used by the Romney campaign: 114,000 jobs were added in September, lowering the unemployment rate from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent.

The argument that we’ve had 43 straight months of unemployment more than 8 percent is no longer a viable attack against the president.

This is the lowest the unemployment rate has been since Obama took office four years ago.

Although this number may seem like average economic news, it is actually quite important and may play a large role in this year’s election.

For one thing, if unemployment remains at 8 percent or higher through Election Day, and if Obama wins in November, he will be the first president since former President Franklin D. Roosevelt to be re-elected with those numbers.

So, in the context of Obama finally seeing positive jobs numbers and Romney charging forward with one debate win under his belt, the response to the unemployment rate was predictable.

Romney and his campaign have chosen to tackle the jobs figure by saying that it’s not good enough.

In response to the report on Friday, Romney said, “this is not what a real recovery looks like.

We created fewer jobs in September than in August and fewer jobs in August than in July.

The choice in this election is clear.

With Obama, we’ll get another four years like the last four years.

“If I’m elected, we will have a real recovery with pro-growth policies that will create 12 million new jobs and rising incomes for everyone,” Romney said.

Romney has used this line before and as the presidential candidate, he really has no other choice but to promise that he will do better as chief executive to create more jobs for Americans.

However, seeing that Obama was already leading Romney in the polls when the unemployment rate was more than 8 percent, it seems as though Romney may be facing a closer battle than he had hoped for after his blowout performance in the
debate on Wednesday.

­— sydhoffe@indiana.edu