President Obama is Back In Campaign Mode

Big jobs speech showed a newly fired up President Obama

There was plenty of doubt before the big jobs speech last week that President Obama had it in him to take it to Republicans over the next 14 months.  All doubt should now be gone.

President Obama is fired up.  At some moments, during his speech he even sounded a little ticked off.  And he should be. The political stalemate in Washington right now is hindering any movement towards rebounding from the Great Recession.

The urgency of the bleak economic situation could not be made more evident by the tone of his voice.  “Americans have real life concerns,” he quipped, “We are tougher than the times that we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been."

President Obama knows that in this political environment he describes, the chance of The American Jobs Act passing is about zero.  The Republican controlled House will never pass it and overcoming a Republican filibuster in the Senate make this bill most certainly DOA.

The difference between the White House strategy for this new fight is that it doesn’t matter if the bill will pass.  The White House is looking towards 2012.  The House of Representatives are also looking towards 2012.  The upcoming elections are putting pressure on both political parties to act on the number one issue of the day: jobs.  With unemployment stuck at 9%, both sides need to at least appear as though the economy, and not politics, is the number one thing on their minds.

Another difference between the way in which the White House rolled out the American Jobs Act and past initiatives is they have thus far given away nothing.  The normal approach of this White House has been to look like the “adult” in the room and give away too much to reach a deal with Republicans.  Not this time.