This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
By Greg Sargent
The Washington Post
Mitt Romney's campaign again blasted President Obama for presiding over a "net" loss in jobs during his first term. This metric is bogus because it factors in the hundreds of thousands of jobs that the economy was hemorrhaging when Obama took office.
But this time, there's an intriguing twist in Romney's argument. In the same statement, his camp defends Romney's jobs record as governor of Massachusetts by pointing out ... that Romney inherited a state economy that was hemorrhaging jobs when he took office.
"Governor Romney's focus on fiscal responsibility helped create an environment where job growth returned to Massachusetts. Job growth increased ... and the state added over 40,000 payroll jobs during his final year in office — the best year of job growth in Massachusetts over the past decade," the campaign said in a press release.
The Romney campaign is defending itself against the latest Democratic attack line by pointing out that Romney should be judged by the job growth that happened after jobs losses were reversed, and even by the number of jobs added toward the end of his term. This is precisely the argument the Romney campaign dismisses when Obama makes it. Indeed, the same statement hits Obama for his "net negative record on job creation," which is true only if you factor in the jobs losses at the start of Obama's term.
If we were to apply to Obama the same standard that the Romney campaign wants applied to itself, Obama has created millions of jobs.