It's the economy stupid? (updated)

I'm having a few laughs watching the Republican debate in NH tonight and all their talk about job creation. They seem sure that the way to beat Obama is to try to convince the public that he's failed on that front.

But they're not the only one's who are making that assumption. This is what passes for conventional wisdom in politics these days...Obama's fate is tied to the economy.

I'll admit that my personality is such that I have a natural visceral reaction against anything that becomes conventional wisdom. We have to remember that all of this angst is stemming mostly from ONE month's lower than expected job growth. Where will all these naysayers be when we have another month in which over 200,000 jobs are added?

But even more than that, what happens when something occurs that changes the conversation? Think of some of the things - other than the economy - that have garnered our attention during the last 2 years.

Arab Spring
Gulf Oil Spill
Shooting in Tucson
Killing bin Laden

I know that a lot of people are hurting because of the economy. But the truth is - the attention span of the American voter is pretty short. All the press has to do is pretend like what Rep. Weiner tweets is a big deal and the conversation changes.

What we learned about Obama from the action against bin Laden is that he doesn't play his hand until he's ready to go. He was working on that plan from day one in the White House and it finally culminated over 2 years later. Do you think that perhaps he has another couple of those kinds of things up his sleeve that will come to fruition in the next 17 months?

The economy will certainly be a critical issue in this campaign. But right now too many people are assuming it will be the only one.

UPDAATE: At the Republican debate, they spent about 10 minutes of the 2 hours on foreign policy and that was mostly limited to the candidates criticizing Obama about Libya. After the bin Laden incident, I remember all of the "sage" pundits talking about how it wouldn't have that much long term impact on the presidential race because Obama wouldn't maintain the bounce in his poll numbers. My reaction was to agree about the poll numbers but to say that what we saw last night would be the big impact...it took a HUGE issue off the table for the Republicans. There will be no talk about the "anti-colonial Kenyan terrorist sympathizer" in this campaign.