Mitt Romney: Job Creator. Barack Obama: Job destroyer. That’s the central message of the Romney Campaign. Via Greg Sargent:
“This is a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover. This is 2 million jobs that he lost as President. And by the way, when he was overseeing General Motors and Chrysler, how many factories did he close? How many dealerships? How many thousands upon thousands of Americans had to be let go in an effort to try and save those businesses? That’s what we did in our business. And I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs. By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country. So if the President wants to talk about jobs, and I hope he does, we’ll be comparing my record with his record and he comes up very, very short.” – Mitt Romney (emphasis Greg’s)
Sounds nice, but its just not true. Paul Krugman notes the state of the economy prior to Obama’s inauguration. Benen points out that the situation is improving. And Greg Sargent makes the crucial point:
Romney is only counting jobs gained at companies restructured at Bain during and after his years there — and is notfactoring in jobs lost — in claiming he created over 100,000 jobs.
Meanwhile, as the Romney camp concedes to Kessler, in making the claim Obama is a job destroyer, Romney is factoring in the jobs that were lost during Obama’s presidency — before Obama’s policies went into effect. In other words, Romney is calculating a “net” number for Obama, and isn’t calculating a net number for himself.
UPDATE:
Krugman provides a new post with this zinger:
By that standard, everyone who’s spent a lot of time with slot machines is a big winner, since only the pluses count.
Heh. Also, it should be noted that he used the same title I did in his new post. Maybe he reads my blog! How cool would that be.
520 Chestnut 
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