Jobs and the election

I was trying to think of a way to phrase my post about the latest job figures. Ted Barlow and Megan McArdle beat me to it, though. Even Irwin Stelzer, in a Weekly Standard article that highlights the good news about the economy over the past month, concedes the following: the most widely watched and ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

I was trying to think of a way to phrase my post about the latest job figures. Ted Barlow and Megan McArdle beat me to it, though. Even Irwin Stelzer, in a Weekly Standard article that highlights the good news about the economy over the past month, concedes the following:

I was trying to think of a way to phrase my post about the latest job figures. Ted Barlow and Megan McArdle beat me to it, though. Even Irwin Stelzer, in a Weekly Standard article that highlights the good news about the economy over the past month, concedes the following:

the most widely watched and reported figures–jobs, oil prices, and stock prices–are grist for the Kerry mill. The jobs market is not as strong as Bush would like it to be, oil and gas prices are higher than he would wish, and stock prices are stuck somewhere between level and falling. Those are the numbers that voters see repeatedly reported on television screens, and, in the case of gas prices, feel in their pockets every time they fill their tanks. Business Week estimates that consumers are spending an average of an extra $10 billion per month for gas and other energy products. Also, the effects of the Bush tax refunds have worn off, and a good day for stock prices is one on which they don’t fall. All of this is apt to tame the animal spirits of both consumers and businessmen. That is not a recipe for reelecting an incumbent who took responsibility for the now-slowing recovery when it was steaming ahead.

Back in the fall at a Right Wing News symposium, I was asked, “What does the Dean Kerry have to do to beat Bush?” I answered: “It’s less what Dean Kerry has to do than what happens in Iraq and the economy. The worse those situations are, the less Dean Kerry has to do.” Keep that line in mind for the next three months [That would be easier if you hadn’t assumed it was going to be Dean–ed. Hey, I was just responding to the question!! Besides, all the cool blogs thought Dean was going to win then!]

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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