The Archives

Newsweek wrote that “what President Nixon needs to win re-election, an aide says, is not so much an economic boom as ‘arguable prosperity’—and his success or failure in achieving it promises to be the central issue of the fall campaign.” The economy regained strength throughout that year, and Nixon won reelection in a landslide. In President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, economic woes also played a prominent role. COVID-19 led to financial turmoil and turned a record-low unemployment rate of 3.5 percent in February 2020 into 14.7 percent only two months later.