US President Barack Obama hit the road Monday to tackle a jobs crisis clouding his reelection bid as the 2012 Republican pacesetter branded him indifferent to the misery of the unemployed. Obama was travelling to North Carolina and Florida, two swing states which will help decide his fate next year, on a day when the first Republican campaign debate was set to reverberate with scything attacks on his record.
The president was meeting his Jobs Council, a group of corporate CEOs and academics set up to promote ideas for sparking unemployment growth, at a factory that manufactures world-leading energy efficient LED lighting. The visit came with the White House on the defensive following official data showing that the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent last month, and other signs the recovery is slowing after the deepest recession in decades.
Obama's efforts to unleash growth come as unemployment and the economy emerge as top themes of the quickly unfolding 2012 election race, as Republicans begin to vie for a place on the party's nominating ticket. Front-runner Mitt Romney unleashed the most stinging assault yet of the nascent Republican campaign, accusing Obama of being indifferent to the plight of Americans stuck in the jobless trap.
In a new campaign ad, Romney played off a remark by the president that disappointing recent jobs data represented a "bump in the road" on the route to a full economic recovery. The spot shows people lying in a road, then standing up in turn to declare "I'm an American, not a bump in the road" and holding up a placard with their name followed by "stands with Mitt."
White House spokesman Jay Carney shrugged off the attack, saying that Obama had used a common phrase in the English lexicon and adding the economy was "heading in the right direction" though the path may not be smooth. "That is precisely because of the devastating impact the recession did have on the economy and the unemployment in this country," Carney said aboard Air Force One.
Obama's Jobs and Competitiveness Council was meeting at a firm called Cree in Durham, North Carolina, which the White House sees as an example of the innovation needed to kick-start employment in competitive global markets. The firm has hired some 750 people, including over 180 scientists and engineers in the last year, and has built a new production line for its LED lighting products. The jobs council is headed by GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, and includes luminaries like AOL founder Steve Case and Gary Kelly, chairman and CEO of Southwest Airlines.
"The US economy is resilient, but the inescapable truth is that we have a persistent jobs challenge that demands an aggressive response," wrote Immelt and American Express CEO and chairman Ken Chenault in a Wall Street Journal opinion story on Monday. "America needs more growth. The United States needs to reverse trends that developed over a long period of time, and the solutions aren't easy politically, socially or economically. "The economic decisions we make now will determine American job creation and competitiveness in the years to come. Government, business and labour need to work together to get this done." Later on Monday, Obama was due to head to another critical electoral state, Florida, which he won in the 2008 election. But Obama faces a tough task to pull off a repeat win in 2012 as the state battles a jobs and foreclosures crisis.
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