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Calling himself an “underdog,” President Obama today said the faltering economy
is a drag on his presidency and seriously impairing his chances of winning again in
2012. “Absolutely,” he said in response to a question from ABC News’ George Stephan-
opoulos about whether the odds were against him come November 2012, given the
economy. “I’m used to being the underdog. But at the end of the day people are going
to ask, who’s got a vision?” The American people, he conceded, are “not better off”
than they were four years ago. “The unemployment rate is way too high,” he said of
the 9 percent jobless rate, the highest in more than half a century. Obama said his
proposed American Jobs Act will put construction workers, teachers and veterans to
work and give “more consumers more confidence.” Foreign affairs, the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and social issues like gay marriage will all be fodder on the campaign
trail, but with the first caucus and primaries less than 100 days away, no issue looms
larger for 2012 than the economy and jobs. The latest unemployment figures for the
month of September will be released Friday, but the jobless rate is not expected to sign-
ificantly improve. And next year, leading up to the fall elections, the unemployment
rate is expected to climb to its highest level since 1940. Obama’s job approval rate is
hovering at around 40 percent. Obama would not handicap the 2012 election, but ob-
jected to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s comments that he divided people more than
united them. Republicans, he said, have stood in the way of working with him time
and again to fix the economy. “At every step of way, I have tried to get the Republican
Party to work with me on the biggest crisis of our lifetime. And each time we’ve gotten
‘No,’” he said. Obama called the 2012 race a “contest of values and vision” and a refer-
endum on whether Americans believed the government should invest now in long-term
improvements in education and infrastructure. The president has tried, often unsucc-
essfully, to tread a line between bolstering the financial institutions that underpin the
economy and protecting consumers and working people. He has been unable to push a
tax hike for wealthy Americans through Congress and unwilling to call for greater re-
gulation on Wall Street.
