It's worth saying that I'm not defending Obama here. I see nothing that he needs defense from. There's no actual attack being levied that anyone can rebut, or ideas being tossed out that anyone can argue. Instead, Obama has said something Politically Damaging. And it will Damage him. And we'll all watch to see how badly.

But let's be clear: It's not damaging because we think it foretells him doing something harmful to the country. It's not damaging because it suggests his policy agenda is poorly conceived, or his priorities are awry. It matters only because it matters, not because it means anything about Obama, or illuminates anything about his potential presidency. It's a hollow scandal. 

The news media and the government are fixated on the fact that the U.S. economy may be headed into a recession -- defined as two or more successive quarters of declining gross domestic product. The situation is actually much worse. By some measures of economic performance, the United States has been in a recession since 1975 -- a recession in quality of life, or well-being.

Once Americans' well-being becomes the basis for measuring our success, other reforms should follow. We should tax bads (carbon emissions, depletion of natural resources) rather than goods (labor, savings, investment). We should recognize the negative effects of growing income disparities and take steps to address them.

So the new labor report is out, and it says that nonfarm payrolls actually fell last month. On the other hand, employment growth for December was revised up.

You shouldn’t take any of this seriously. A better guide is probably to average the last 2 or 3 months. What you get then is that employment is still growing, but v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. In particular, employment growth is well short of what’s necessary to keep up with population growth. So even though it’s premature to say that jobs are shrinking, as a practical matter this makes no difference: the truth is that the jobs picture looks moderately dire.

The crisis in the housing market is spilling over into other sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, consumers, who are up to their necks in debt, didn’t bail out the economy over Christmas with more spending. And gas prices remain high. Bush may lose a few percentage points in the polls. The wealthiest Americans might not make much money in the stock market. But millions of other Americans will lose their homes, their jobs, and their health insurance. Just as the benefits of a growing economy are unequally distributed, so too are the costs.