Republicans are making it easy for Obama

[Draggingtree]

The Washington Post:

 

Republicans are making it easy for Obama

 

 

By Michael Gerson, Opinion Writer,

 

 

Published: February 20

Meanwhile, back at the general election, Obama is happily avoiding serious scrutiny. The country’s economy might be improving, but it remains pathetically weak. Unemployment has remained north of 8 percent for three years — the longest period since the Great Depression. Long-term unemployment is at its worst since 1948. The collapse in housing prices is worse than during the Great Depression. Since 2009 — when Obama predicted his stimulus package would raise 2 million people out of poverty — more than 6 million Americans have fallen into poverty. “The standard of living for Americans,” reports the Christian Science Monitor, “has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the U.S. government began recording it five decades ago.”

Obama can claim that financial crises produce particularly durable recessions or that past failures were so severe that they challenge even his economic genius. We’ll see how those excuses play. But right now, he is not even being forced to offer them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/