Mitt Romney Says a President Should Have Six to Twelve Months To Get Policies in Place – And By That Standard

So Then Mr. Obama Looks Good, Looks Really Good

One of the factual questions in politics is when does the clock start ticking on a new President.  For example, President Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009.  At that point in time the government’s fiscal year was nearly one/third over, having begun on September 1, 2008.  So is FY 2009 Mr. Obama’s responsibility or Mr. Bush’s?  Reasonable people seem to think it is Mr. Bush’s since it takes time for a new President to get his policies in place.

So who are these ‘reasonable people’ Well one of them is Mitt Romney, who said in an interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that a new President should have time to put a program in place before he is measured on that program.

And we ought to give, whichever president is going to be elected, at least six months or a year to get those policies in place.

Of course, this statement conflicts with earlier statements of Mr. Romney (Ok, who exactly is surprised by that) and more importantly it gives a great deal of credit to Mr. Obama.  From the Maddow blog.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Romney has said the clock should start in February 2009, Obama's first month in office. If that's fair -- if the president deserves the blame for every job lost on his 11th day in office -- it's true that under Obama, the economy is still in a deep hole and hasn't fully recovered from the losses of early 2009.

But look what happens when we start the clock, as Romney suggests, six months to a year after President Obama was sworn in. In fact, if we don't hold Obama's first year against him, the economy has added over 3.7 million jobs overall during his presidency, and over 4.2 million in the private sector.

That's not the count by my standard; that's the count by Romney's standard.

And here is the graphical proof from the same source.

Note: This is why Mitt’s advisers don’t ever want him to do an interview, just keep him talking on his prepared, pre-approved speech.  

Editor's note:  Thanks to Taegan Goddard and his great political blog.