Election Road Trip, Day 18: Good News!

Phoenix, Az.

Event: John McGraw gets a job

Road trip regulars may remember that last week I wrote about John McGraw who’d been laid off for 19 months and working feverishly to land a new job. He had sent out 4-5000 resumes globally and received 2300 rejections. Today, he emailed this:

Hope the road trip is going well … just wanted to quickly share my good news with you! As you know I have been seriously looking for a job since May 2009. 16 months with almost continuous effort (7 days a week, no vacations) and only about 10 interviews in over 4,000 contacts. Never a single offer, not even one I could turn down.

Today I was offered a sales position where I will be instrumental in launching a new channel strategy … I accepted and you can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to working and paying taxes again … no matter what some think about the unemployed, 99.5% of us want to work and we will probably work even harder than we did before because we know the effects this has on our families and friends.

Again, thanks for visiting with me last week, you must have brought me good luck. Please contact me anytime for another view of what is happening in the world

Nice to see that a 61-year-old executive with a good mind and a killer work ethic can still find a job. Congratulations, John! And good luck.

This post is part of my Election Road Trip 2010 project. To track my location across the country, and read all my road trip posts, click here.

The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

deconstructiva

John, if you’re reading this blog, congrats, seriously. You know how much the market really sucks right now, so way to go and good luck.
.
Joe, I hope on your tour you’ve spoken to many in and out of work who are pondering ways to get out of this mess. I know swampland is not always an economic blog but the economy is #1 political issue, NOT witchcraft or DADT. Alas, TIME’s biz blog, Curious Capitalist, is losing its best writer (Kiviat) so if YOU or other teammates like Pickert or Newton-Small have more thoughts on job creation – or spoken to those who have – go for it. Seriously, please do more of this. Millions are still out of work and this crap needs to end now. Thanks.
stuartzechman

Seconded, loudly.
Joe Klein

Decon–I sent a copy of this post to John. And I’m going to have A LOT to say about jobs after this trip ends next week. Meanwhile, I’m in the midst of an amazing 24 hours in Phoenix and will have plenty to say about it tomorrow.
kevin

Sorry for the OT, but the Pledge thread is too far down and I couldn’t resist:
deconstructiva

Thanks, Joe. I look forward to your Phoenix post. Arizona politics have really heated up this year.
mikew67

…hey, let’s just listen to Palin and the failed GOP, and go back to cut taxes / cut govt that we tried for the 3 decades of the Reagan/Bush era. In fact, let’s get ANOTHER big tax cut to the wealthiest as we did in 1981 and 2001.

I mean, that worked SO well to deliver Trickle Down prosperity. Almost nobody is unemployed now. And the banks and oil companies and health insurers, heck – they POLICED THEMSELVES!!! Get government out of the WAY by golly!

Abe Lincoln would have said;
“You can fool some of the people, ALL of the time”… ;^)

– Balkingpoints / www
vwcat

I am so happy for the guy.
My husband has stunned me during this recession.
He is over 50, we live in a high unemployment area and the prospects are not good around here. We use to be a great manufacturing town and now, outside of the professionals like lawyer, about the best one can do is retail.
Anyway, my husband was offered a temporary job about 50 miles away in a town outside Madison, Wi. We live close to the border in Illinois.
But, it was a job and one in his field.
This week he was offered a permanent job with the place and we will have very good benefts with health care and he will be making more money.
this is just something that defies the normal in this country – especially with our manufacturing base being gutted by gop policies.
kbanginmotown

kevin: Thanks for that!
.
OT re: Taxes.
.
Although it appears that the Dems caved in on extending the Bush Tax cuts, I’d like to offer a different viewpoint: The Dems are respecting the GOP’s wishes.
.
Think about it. 10 years ago, the GOP passed this tax cut with a sunset provision. Why not 5 years or 20 years or making it permanent?
.
Whatever the answer, the GOP must have had a good reason for putting a 10-year duration on this tax cut, and the Dems should not be so callus as to undo what the GOP in its wisdom has done.
destor23

Seems to me that the real issue is that we don’t have enough of a safety net so that he had to find a job at this point. Working is not the point of life, you know.
kbanginmotown

Thank you for sharing your story, vwcat.
kevin

The Daily Show was on this too tonight, but even better — they intercut Republicans unveiling their “new ideas” today with clips of them promising the exact same things in years past, including Boehner, past and present, using the exact same language, word for word. Priceless.
grape_crush

Awesome! Congrats, John!
apr2563

Congratulations!! It is particularly good to hear an older, well qualified, American has found a job.
Now if the Republicans would stop diparaging those people that have been unemployed for months and understand they are desperately trying to find a job, it would be helpful.
stuartzechman

Thanks so much for responding to commentary, Joe Klein, it is always greatly appreciated.
swissArmyBrainBETA

ok i gotta check out the daily show clip, but about this one: the uncut question and answer part (probably right after the unveiling in the clip) is awesome. Boehner might be the BEST question dodger I’ve ever seen and that’s saying a lot. my favorite part about him is the grin that he can just barely suppress when he’s spouting nonsense. the “hell no” speech is the best example