Reihan finds that a portion of today's high unemployment rate is actually the result of better economic circumstances - more two-income households, more generous unemployment insurance - than previous recessions:
[W]ithout trivializing the psychic trauma involved, there's no getting around the fact that it is in many respects much easier to be unemployed now than it was in the Reagan-Volcker era. And if that's true, "blaming" President Obama for a high unemployment rate seems faintly absurd. Is it the president's fault that Americans are better off than they were 30 years ago, and are thus not desperate to take whatever job that comes along? [...] This isn't necessarily a bad thing for society. One can imagine workers using an extended spell of unemployment as an opportunity to gain new skills and to spend time with loved ones.