Charlie Gibson on Economy: 1982 vs. 2009

ABC's Charles Gibson is a perfect example of how a recession is described when a Republican is president vs. when a Democrat is president. From Rush:

GIBSON 1982: (downcast music) There really isn't any good news in the statistics. All the numbers are bad. Teenagers who will be coming on the job market in even greater numbers come June: 23% unemployed. Black teenage unemployment is 48.1%. And unemployment among adult men is 8.2%, the highest since World War II. Normally in spring unemployment comes down as opportunities for outdoor work become available, but not this year: 450,000 more people are unemployed than were a month ago.

RUSH: It's 551,000 per month now and 450,000 people in 1982. "All numbers are bad," teenage employment, 23%. It's 52% today! Here's Charles Gibson June 5th, 2009, reporting on an unemployment rate of 9.4%.

GIBSON 2009: (bouncy music) In the current economic environment, sometimes a bad jobs report can look good! 345,000 American workers lost their jobs in May. A big number to be sure, traumatic if you're one of the 345,000, but the number was smaller than economists had predicted, and that's good news!

I have no doubt you could go back to 2002 and find the same thing - the loss of 2 million jobs during Bush's first year (vs. 6 million for Obama). I don't think we will ever hear the term "jobless recovery" in the next couple years.