There’s no solace in the employment report for June, released Friday. The economy added a paltry 80,000 jobs last month, leaving no doubt that the economy is slowing. In the past three months, the economy averaged 75,000 new jobs a month, compared with 226,000 in the prior three months. The jobless rate in June held steady at 8.2 percent, which is down from the recession peak of 10 percent in October 2009 but still very high.


Who is to blame?


How can it be fixed?


On the campaign trail, President Obama has explained correctly that recoveries from financial crashes are tortured affairs and that it was an achievement to get the economy growing again a mere six months after he took office. For that, he credits the 2009 stimulus he pushed through Congress, a point well supported by public- and private-sector economic analyses. It’s also worth noting that job growth in the current recovery has actually outpaced the job growth following the Bush-era recession in 2001. The recovery is not unusually weak; what is atypical is the length and severity of the recession that Mr. Obama inherited.


Mitt Romney is having none of that. His campaign has centered on what he calls Mr. Obama’s “failed economic record.” This from a man who says the stimulus was a failure and the rescue of the auto industry a mistake, whose prescription for stabilizing the housing market is to let it crash, whose plan for health care is to repeal the health reform law, and who clings to discredited policies, like more tax cuts for the rich and less regulation for the banks. Mr. Romney’s proposals would take the nation back to the conditions that inflated the bubble and led to the bust.


The question then is why the recovery under Mr. Obama has not been stronger. Part of the answer lies beyond the control of any American politician, including the euro zone crisis and, more recently, the slowdown in China. But part is the result of obstructionist Republican politics, including the fiasco in 2011 over raising the debt ceiling, which dented confidence in Congress’s ability to steer the economy.


Mr. Obama’s big mistake was to turn prematurely from the need for stimulus to a focus on cutting the budget. He may have hoped to co-opt the Republican emphasis on deficits. He would have done better to slam them on their cynicism in lamenting the deficit after enabling the tax cuts, wars and financial crisis — all Bush-era creations — that have deepened the debt.


What he is not responsible for is the continued Republican obstructionism, even in the face of a weakening economy. Last fall, Mr. Obama returned to job creation, with a proposed package that would have created up to 1.9 million jobs, including aid to states to hire teachers and other public employees, investments in infrastructure and tax breaks for new hiring.


Republicans in Congress blocked the package and have balked at other plans from the administration ever since. Wed as they are to the notion that the weak economy is their best shot at victory in November, there is virtually no chance for change in the months ahead. And that means more jobs reports like the one for June.