'Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?'

By Gerald Seib at The Wall Street Journal

Most presidential elections turn on the economy, but that figures to be especially true this time. Recent weeks have brought a few, tentative signs that the nation's bleak jobs picture may be improving, which would certainly help the president. Still, the unemployment rate stands at an unhealthy 8.6%, and few analysts think it will drop fast enough to reach the 7.4% rate that prevailed when Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984, or even the 7.5% when Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid in 1980. Not since Franklin Roosevelt won re-election in 1936 has a president faced a worse jobless situation.

More broadly, Mr. Reagan set the modern standard for gauging the economic mood of voters in an election year in that 1980 race, when he unseated Mr. Carter in large measure by asking voters simply: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" If the coming election is determined by that maxim, or by most traditional measures, President Obama would seem to face bleak prospects.

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