This New York Times piece is generating some chatter this morning, but some larger context is in order.
No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.
Seventeen months before the next election, it is increasingly clear that President Obama must defy that trend to keep his job. […]
Ten presidents have stood for re-election since Mr. Roosevelt. In four instances the unemployment rate stood above 6 percent on Election Day. Three presidents lost: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. But Ronald Reagan won, despite 7.2 percent unemployment in November 1984, because the rate was falling and voters decided he was fixing the problem.
There’s nothing incorrect about any of this. Every president since FDR who’s won re-election has seen an unemployment rate below 7.2% (though the casual relationship is sketchy). Will the unemployment rate be below 7.2% by Election Day 2012? It would take a miracle that almost certainly won’t happen.
But the context matters here. No president since FDR has won with a high unemployment rate because no president since FDR has had to govern at a time of a global economic crisis like the Great Depression or the Great Recession. The U.S. has seen plenty of downturns over the last eight decades, but financial collapses are fairly rare, produce far more severe conditions, and take much longer to recover from.
In other words, Obama has a good excuse. Of course the unemployment rate won’t be below 7.2%. Under the circumstances and given the calamity Obama inherited, that’s impossible.
The more relevant question is what Americans are willing to put up with. In 1934, during FDR’s first midterms, the unemployment rate was about 22%. The public was thrilled — it had come down considerably from 1932. By 1936, when FDR was seeking a second term, the unemployment rate was about 17%. How can an incumbent president win re-election with a 17% unemployment rate? Because things were getting better, not worse.
That’s obviously the challenge for President Obama. The 7.2% threshold is largely irrelevant — comparing the current economic circumstances to what other modern presidents have dealt with is silly. The more relevant metric is directional — are things better or getting worse by the time voters head to the polls, and if worse, who gets the blame.
Update: Dana Houle makes an excellent point about sample sizes: “Since FDR only Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the two Bush’s have been elected president and then sought reelection. It’s hard to draw big conclusions from a sample of seven. Since FDR, only three times has a president been up for reelection when the unemployment rate was as high as 7.2%. Two of those presidents-Carter and Bush I-lost. The other, Reagan, won. For those who weren’t counting, that a sample of three.”
