President Barack Obama is back in Ohio this week on another campaign trip. I am sure it won’t be his last: Both he and Mitt Romney are expected to be here a lot. I assume that, as he did the last time he was here, President Obama will be looking to blame others as he explains to working families in Ohio why we continue to be stuck in the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. Respectfully, I think he needs to look no further than his own policies over the past 3 1/2 years. They have failed to turn things around because they make it harder, not easier, to create jobs here in Ohio and around the country.

There is more troubling evidence this week of the weakness in the economy, including a new report that U.S. manufacturing shrank for the first time since the month we started to come out of the recession in 2009. That’s not a good sign. And neither are many others.

Under President Obama, we are living through a historically weak recovery, with unemployment 46 percent higher than the president and his team promised. More than 20 million Americans either cannot find work, have given up searching or have been forced to accept part-time jobs. That’s almost double the entire population of Ohio — every man, woman and child. We must and can do better.

Typically, the steeper a recession, the stronger the recovery. In recoveries, millions of unemployed Americans return to work and idled factories are put to use again, giving the economy lots of room to grow.

More.