Obama speech pivotal to economy, own fortunes
The new employment initiative the US leader will announce to a rare joint session of Congress is crucial both to jolting the economy back to life and to replenishing Obama's fading political stock ahead of the 2012 election.
Obama's brand has been tarnished by a national mood of pessimism percolated from dashed hopes of his 2008 election win and a storm of bad economic news.
The US jobs engine has shuddered to a halt, growth is crawling, deficits and debt cloud Washington's credit outlook, stock markets are tumbling, consumer confidence has dried up and global contagion is again feared.
The result: amid 9.1 percent unemployment, polls show Americans are losing trust in Obama's economic management -- just 37 percent in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll Tuesday expressed satisfaction with the president on the economy.
And with his reelection bid already firing up and Republicans taking aim, there is little time to get Americans back to work.
"This week's speech on job creation offers an enormous opportunity to recast the debate and with it the Obama presidency," said Democraticpollster Celinda Lake, unveiling a new Politico/George Washington University battleground poll.
The Politico poll found 72 percent of Americans believe their nation is on the wrong track, encapsulating Obama's 2012 predicament.
However, the survey offered the president a ray of hope, finding that 74 percent of voters strongly or somewhat approve of their graying leader -- suggesting he may just get a hearing on Thursday.
Obama faces apparently contradictory problems: an economy stripped of demand which needs stimulating and a bloated deficit choking long-term economic prospects which mandates spending cuts.
Most observers believe both threats must be tackled simultaneously.
But Washington has choked at this test once before, when Obama and House Speaker John Boehner failed to clinch a "grand bargain" during a rancorous debate on government borrowing in July.
The president insists that any deficit cutting solution should be "balanced" -- including a mix of revenues (or tax hikes on the richest Americans) and spending cuts to reduce a deficit projected to hit $1.5 trillion this year.
Republicans who control the House of Representatives however refuse to countenance the kind of investment Obama wants to revive the economy and they also oppose tax rises.
Obama is on dicey political ground because as 2012 looms, there is little sense the economy will significantly improve.
His own administration last week estimated that late next year the jobless rate could be at best as high as 8.2 percent.
Despite Obama's claims that he prevented a second Great Depression in 2009, he is vulnerable to charges by Republican candidates that his recovery policies since then have failed.
The White House expects the economy to expand only in a 2.6-3.3 percent range next year, and accelerate to near-4.0 percent growth only by 2014.
So Obama is under pressure in Thursday's speech to recast his political narrative, and to offer the optimistic prospect of improvement -- even with the imited policy arsenal he has to deploy.
So far, the White House has indicated the plan will seek to put construction workers back on the job of mending America's infrastructure and include an extension of a current payroll tax cut.
If Republicans refuse to pass it, Obama warns they will pay a price.
"It is a significant proposal, but it contains ideas that have historically garnered bipartisan support by the very members who will sit in the hall on Thursday night," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
Officials say Obama will also challenge Republicans to agree deficit cuts of higher than the $1.5 trillion mandate of a congressional "supercommittee" charged with cutting spending.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011