The President and Structural Unemployment

Paul Krugman writes,

I’m not alone in marveling at the extent to which Obama has thrown his rhetorical weight behind anti-Keynesian economics; Ryan Avent is equally amazed, as are many others. And now he’s endorsing the structural unemployment story too.

Here's the thing: if the President says, "The unemployment issue isn't structural," he has to explain why he's not doing more to address the issue, arguably putting his weight behind the idea that the President has enormous personal power to influence the employment rate, and that if you believe unemployment is too high you should vote for somebody else in the next election. By suggesting that it's structural, the President is taking a position that distances the White House and its policies from the high unemployment rate. So it may not be good economics, but it may well be good politics.