Who won the week?

A great debate meets a flashy jobs number

Mitt Romney and President Obama play nice after the first presidential debate on Oct. 3.
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Mitt Romney's rousing debate performance gave his campaign a much-needed shot of, well, "chance-to-win" serum. And the unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent as the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised estimates from previous months. Here, President Obama, is your not-so-anemic recovery!

Ron Fournier of National Journal tweeted that the latter is better than the former and Obama won the week. It plays to Obama's "trajectory argument," he wrote. And voters know that "7" is better than "8." NBC's First Read team notes that the positive press coverage from the news will help guide the news coverage over the next 24 to 48 hours, and since the first real polls you'll want to read — those that fully incorporate the debate, its aftermath and this news, won't come out until Tuesday, the shellacking effect Obama might have experienced will be diminished.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.