Democratic convention hoopla over, Obama now faces a reality check

The conventions are over. Back to reality. Friday morning, just hours after President Obama delivered his big address at the Democratic National Convention, the new unemployment figure was released – 8.1 percent in August, down from 8.3 percent the month before.

The slight decline may seem a political boon to Mr. Obama, but it reflects discouraged workers dropping out of the labor force. The economy added only 96,000 jobs last month, below expectations.

In a tight presidential race against Republican Mitt Romney, public perceptions of the economy’s direction will be central to the outcome in November. But with Friday’s mixed news, the shape of the race was likely to remain unchanged.

The jobs report served as a reminder of the challenge Mr. Obama faces as he seeks a second term amid chronically high unemployment. If Obama succeeds, he will have defied political gravity: No president has won reelection with such high unemployment since Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

But that’s a big “if.” As Obama’s convention speech demonstrated, it’s not 2008 anymore. By definition, he could not be purely aspirational. He has a record to defend. And there were moments in his address when he seemed painfully mindful of that fact, as he asked for more time to finish the task of rebuilding the economy.

“I won't pretend the path I'm offering is quick or easy. I never have,” the president said in his speech to 20,000 party activists in the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C. “You didn't elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.”

Most strikingly, Obama barely referred to his signature legislative accomplishments – the record-high stimulus package he got through Congress within weeks of taking office, followed by his landmark health-care reform a year later. Both remain controversial, and perhaps fearing he might sound defensive, Obama only touched on the arguments. The night before, in what was widely seen as the most compelling speech of the Democratic convention, former President Clinton took on the heavy lift of defending and promoting both the recovery act and “Obamacare.”

Obama, in contrast, focused on what he called “a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.” That choice, he made clear, pits the Democratic view that government can be part of the solution against the Republican view that government needs to get out of the way.  

“We insist on personal responsibility and we celebrate individual initiative,” Obama said. But, he added, “we also believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.”

1 | 2

Next