President Obama is in Iowa City, Iowa, today, selling the health-care bill that is signed into law and thus traditionally not seen as something that needs to be “sold.”
The unemployment rate in Iowa City in January, the most recent month for which figures are available, is 3.9 percent. With the national rate at 9.7 percent, that looks pretty good, and compared to August’s 4.4 percent, it is.
But the local unemployment rate was 2.8 percent in December 2008, and never went above 3.3. percent since January 2005. In other words, even where the economy isn’t that bad, it’s still been worse for almost every month of Obama’s presidency than it was for most of that “awful” Bush presidency.