Dispatch #6

While the Republican primary contest continues in Mississippi and Alabama, degrading the general elective prospects of Mitt Romney, Barack Obama’s poll numbers fell this week as well. His overall approval rating declined to below 50%, and in preference polls between the president and Mitt Romney, Obama shows to no great advantage. But Obama’s ups and downs have little to do with the Republican candidates and much more to do with his chief adversary, the economy. Gasoline prices at the moment are rising markedly nationwide, a pocketbook issue, and while the president has little control over such commodity prices or on the economy as a whole, he takes the blame—or the credit—for these trends. Which is why, in the November election, that contest and its closeness will be determined less by issues, policies, ideas, values, and all the talk about them. The outcome will be determined by directional signals of the economy seven or eight months hence. Presidential elections are most often referenda on the economy. If the growth rate in GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the unemployment rate, and the inflation rate are favorable, Barack Obama will be reelected, perhaps even easily. Though his poll numbers fell this week, 54% of those polled anticipate a second term for him. If the economy worsens, however, a perfectly battered and vapid candidate like Mitt Romney can still win. While hardly thoughtful or deeply rational, democratic elections make a certain kind of fundamental, visceral, irrational sense.