The question that famously crystallized the 1980 presidential campaign — “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” — will determine the fate of Barack Obama in 2012.
Obama is fortunate by comparison to Jimmy Carter, in part because the question is narrower today than it was 32 years ago.
In 1980, people in America did not just feel worse off because of the nation’s economic woes; they felt worse off because of spiraling crime, a surging Soviet threat and the way Iran was thumbing its nose in America’s face by holding 52 hostages. In 2012 (barring the eruption of hostilities between Israel and Iran), world affairs won’t play much of a role in the election.
It all comes down to the economy, where Obama seems in the best shape of his presidency on that score — at least if you read the stats. Unemployment is down almost 2 percentage points from its high; GDP growth stats were just revised upward for the fourth quarter of 2011.
So why did yesterday’s Washington Post/ABC News poll indicate that a stunning two-thirds of Americans believe either that Obama has done nothing to make things better or has actually made them worse? And why, in that same poll, do a staggering 57 percent of independents disapprove of the president?
Perhaps the public mood is a lagging indicator — things need to be better for a while for it to penetrate the public’s consciousness. The problem with this theory is that it suggests people don’t know when they’re better off and need time to get it through their thick heads.
That belief might comfort Obama and his fans, but people aren’t stupid when it comes to their own well-being. Economic measurements of broad national trends on growth and employment won’t make them feel better. Statistics don’t capture the individual experiences of hundreds of millions of people.
Still, the statistics should reflect an upturn in American lives that will show up in the election in November, no?
Not necessarily.
First, as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute is relentless in saying, the chief reason the unemployment rate has dropped is that the labor market has gotten smaller.
“If the size of the US labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office — 65.7 percent then vs. 63.9 percent today — the unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent,” he writes. Millions of people have entirely stopped looking for work, and so don’t show up in the statistics.
And the 92 percent of the workforce that is employed has seen very little wage growth in the Obama era, which wouldn’t incline them to feel much better — especially when gas prices are in an upward spiral, which eats away at earnings in a very visible and painful way twice a week for most Americans.
So the stats don’t measure millions out of work, and they don’t show the lingering emotional effect of the economy’s torpidity on the employed workforce.
Here’s something else that can’t be measured: the electoral problem presented by the housing crisis.
The conversation here tends to revolve around those whose mortgages are underwater or who have defaulted. But 60 percent of American households are owner-occupied, the overwhelming majority of whom pay their bills. And the average American home has declined in value between 30 and 40 percent since 2007.
The lingering effect of that calamitous drop in the value of their largest asset — and the fact that even people who aren’t underwater on their mortgages are having enormous difficulty selling their homes — is a huge national mood-depressor. It won’t show up in an economic survey. But it’s there, and it’s deep.
So no, Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter. But he doesn’t have to be Carter to lose: Carter lost by 10 points in 1980. Today’s mood isn’t as grim, but it’s seriously grim nonetheless. Enough to lose by a point or two at least, and don’t think Obama and his people don’t know it.