“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” So said President Obama in February 2009, declaring that he would be held accountable if his policies failed to improve the economy. Obviously, this did not come to pass. Despite continued economic stagnation and extremely weak job creation, voters gave Obama a second term.

The job numbers released Friday offer still more grounds for buyer’s remorse. The unemployment rate stood at 7.8 percent, equal to the revised November rate and one-tenth higher than the more hopeful 7.7 percent figure that came out just before the election. Only 155,000 jobs were created in December 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ payroll survey. That is not enough to keep up with population increases, never mind produce economic growth. It is also roughly the same as the monthly average for all of 2012 and all of 2011.