Colorlines, News Report, Posted: Jun 11, 2012

 With the economic stall in Europe posing the number one threat to the our fragile recovery, the president took to the podium on Friday to brief Americans on the seriousness of the European situation and to call for Congress to pass his jobs package. In the process, he made an unexpected gaffe by declaring that “the private sector is doing just fine”—and prompted Mitt Romney to pounce on the one subject that offers his campaign hope.

The problem is that the president, while verbally clumsy, was substantively correct. The issue with our economy is jobs, not corporate profits. And as a private equity man with a net worth of a quarter of a billion dollars, Mitt Romney knows better.

For weeks now, Romney has attacked the president’s economic record at every turn. He’s even used the country’s sputtering jobs machine to cite Obama for “moral failure.”

But if the president misspoke, Romney misrepresents. Obama has a legitimate, if limited plan to increase employment. The Republicans do not.

Sadly, the president’s misstatement allowed Romney to dodge this fact and provided the former Massachusetts governor with another opening to advance a retread of his party’s discredited ideas. Read more here.