Obama, 2012 and the Unemployment Rate
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 4th, 2011 4:31 am by HL
Obama, 2012 and the Unemployment Rate
Greg Sargent, Washington Post
This quote from the New York Times is getting a lot of attention today:“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.”That sounds pretty grim for Obama. But Steve Benen supplies crucial context, noting that no president since FDR has won with such high unemployment because no president since FDR has taken office amid such a severe economic crisis:
Obama’s Mother Emerges as an Influence
Roger Cohen, New York Times
For a long time Barack Obama’s mother was little more than the “white woman from Wichita” mentioned in an early Los Angeles Times profile of the future president. She was the pale Kansan silhouette against whom Obama drew the vivid Kenyan figure of his absent Dad in his Bildungsroman of discovered black identity, “Dreams from My Father.”Now, thanks to Janny Scott’s remarkable “A Singular Woman,” absence has become presence. Stanley Ann Dunham, the parent who raised Obama, emerges from romanticized vagueness…
