THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Jobs: The Non-Issue of 1976

By traditional measure the 6,860,000 Americans who were unemployed last month should have been a big, painful political lump demanding the ministrations of Henry ("Scoop") Jackson or Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Those two were ready, bags filled with nostrums.

But when Jimmy Carter won in Ohio, Scoop was afield in Queens, N.Y., trying to salvage the vice presidency out of his primary defeats. Some place over Pennsylvania his cry of "Jobs, jobs, jobs—that's the only issue in this campaign" drifted toward oblivion. A beefy union patron sat in morose silence at the time of that Jackson defeat and spoke to the point:...