Decline in U.S. Jobs Could Prove Costly to GOP Nominee

Sen. John McCain campaigns in Chesterfield, Mo., for the GOP primary with wife Cindy. His chief economic adviser acknowledged that the news on the economy is "pretty sobering." (By Mario Tama -- Getty Images)

Meanwhile, construction employment, the engine of the Bush expansion, shed 27,000 jobs in January, and has fallen by 284,000 since peaking in September 2006.

Those indicators "clearly point to an economy that has, in our view, turned the corner" into a recession, said Bernard Baumohl, managing director of the Economic Outlook Group.

If so, Republicans will have a hard time outrunning Bush's shadow, said Ray C. Fair, an economist at Yale University who has modeled the economy's impact on elections for decades. Because of slow economic growth, Fair had already predicted that the Republican nominee -- weighed down by voter demands for change after eight years of GOP control -- could hope for only 48 percent of the vote. If growth turns even barely negative, the share drops to 46 percent, he said.

"There's no case in history in which we've had a bad recession and the incumbent party has won," he said. "Never."

Advisers to both McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said both GOP candidates are far enough away from the White House to blunt the damage.

"Governor Romney is running as an outsider with experience in the business world, not as a vice president trying to replace a president," said Jim Bognet, a Romney economic adviser.

McCain aides privately acknowledge that their candidate must learn to speak more forcefully about the economy, citing Wednesday's debate in Los Angeles, where he avoided specifics on the issue.

However, his advisers also emphasize that McCain voted against the president's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Those votes have been a point of contention in the fight for the Republican nomination, with Romney using them to question McCain's conservative bona fides, but they could prove to be a plus in a general election, as McCain looks to separate himself from Bush, an aide said.

Others are skeptical. McCain has virtually disavowed statements he made in 2001, when he said Bush's tax cuts were too heavily weighted in favor of the rich, and in 2003, when he questioned cutting taxes in wartime. He now wants to extend the cuts, which are set to expire in 2011.

"It depends which John McCain we're talking about," said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, as he questioned whether McCain could distance himself from Bush. "If you're talking about the John McCain that wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, the answer is absolutely no. They're not called the Bush tax cuts for nothing."