Seeking Jobs and Re-election
Jules Witcover

In advance of President Obama's speech to Congress on putting America back to work, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had his response ready. The televised unveiling of the American Jobs Act was not a jobs plan, McConnell said, "it's a re-election plan." Actually, it was both.

After much procrastinating, Obama finally stepped up to the plate with some hard medicine for Congress to swallow. It turned out to be a $447 billion new stimulus proposal without using the label the Republicans have been so effective rendering offensive. If enacted, the plan would not solve the problem of high unemployment but might put a dent into the stalled rate of 9.1 percent. So in that sense it clearly is "a jobs plan."

But as McConnell recognized, it also is "a re-election plan." It's designed, if the Republicans slam the door on it, to give Obama more tangible evidence that the opposition party is responsible for what he called the "circus" of partisanship and inaction in Washington.

With his insistent tone and words calling on Congress to pass the bill "right away," he lectured its recalcitrant members to put aside the 2012 election of 14 months from now. The American unemployed, he said, "don't have the luxury of waiting 14 months" for help. And he warned the Republicans, "I intend to take that message to every corner of the country." So in that sense the speech was also clearly "a re-election plan."

All this confirms that Obama has at last decided he can no longer pin his hopes, both for economic recovery and his reelection, on Republican cooperation from a party whose congressional leaders, and many of their followers, are determined to bring him down. Yet he must know that his chances of passing any significant new stimulus package require a heavy dose of wishful thinking.

In getting the Republicans in Congress on record against his American Jobs Act, however, the president may be able to swing more public opinion in the argument over who's to blame for the failure to get the economy humming again, and putting people to work. In the 2010 mid-term congressional elections, Obama tried that message to no avail. By putting a plan on the table now and forcing the opposition to block it, he obviously hopes for a better outcome, in public appraisal if not in jobs-creation legislation.

After all the furor over Obama's rebuffed initial request to address Congress a night earlier, in which he again invited taunts of weakness, the president made the most of his delayed appearance. He demonstrated the fire and sense of urgency that loyal Democrats saw lacking and were demanding.

As the faithful on the Democratic side of the House chamber dutifully rose, cheered and applauded repeatedly, nearly all Republicans on their side at stonefaced, silent and inanimate as Obama he pleaded with Congress that America's unemployed "need help, and they need it now."

House Speaker John Boehner, who looked down from his seat behind and above the president with doleful mien as Dr. Obama administered the bad-tasting medicine, later expressed "hope we can work together" on easing the economic trouble. But he didn't sound very convincing.

The major Obama proposals -- more federal spending for hiring on public works projects, payroll tax breaks for the middle class, small and corporate business -- are not new and have already received a cool shoulder from the Republicans. Even if enacted, the kind of swift remedy to joblessness Obama urgently called for would seem unlikely.

Politically, however, the leader of the Democratic Party has at last put himself in front of its parade demanding a more aggressive confrontation with the Republicans, who are mobilizing for the 2012 election, if not for the immediate economic crisis paralyzing the country.

Obama demonstrated in address to Congress that he has lost none of his talent for capsulizing an argument and delivering it with both coherence and passion, to rally broad demand for legislative action. The question is whether it will prove enough in this case to reverse the country's fortunes, and his own.