When unemployment reached 9.5 percent last week, the 24-hour news cycle reflexively rushed to judgment: Did this mean the Obama economic policy was failing? Of course not. Obama's recovery plan is only beginning to jolt the channels of demand and production, and White House and Treasury advisors have long since discarded January's rosier grim predictions of 8 percent joblessness as the cost of the Bush bust; they now warn that the figure will go above 10 percent or 11 percent. But why waste a chance for an early warning that the president's in trouble—as we were confidently, and incorrectly, told he was on the passage of the stimulus package and the House vote on the energy bill?