In the midst of the European debt crisis, lingering instability in the oil-rich Middle East and concerns about a Chinese economic slowdown, the American unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped last month to 8.6 percent, its lowest level in two and a half years.
The Labor Department also said that the nation’s employers added 120,000 jobs in November and that job growth for the previous two months was better than initially reported. That looks like good news for President Obama as he heads into the 2012 presidential election — especially since just a few months ago the picture looked bleak.
How will the GOP claim credit for this? And how, especially, will the GOP claim credit when the jobless rate dips below 7% before November of 2012?
After all, they do not hold the White House, and they have not agreed to anything the White House has done — via Congress, or, OMG, Executive Order, which, in the end, may be the only way meaningful reform has been accomplished.
Obama 2012.
Democratic Congress, 2012.