Obama has set up his unemployment excuse

There's no guarantee that the unemployment rate, which has been falling, will stay on the improvement path through 2012.  The president, eager to take credit for the unemployment recovery, has set up his excuse in case things go south over the next few months.  The excuse he'll be pulling out in September?

President Barack Obama Friday welcomed data showing unemployment fell to 8.3 percent last month, and warned Congress not to "muck up" the recovery by thwarting his economic policies.

The underlying implication is that his policies do indeed work and are in the process of working now. Anything that goes wrong from here to election day will be the fault of Congress. It doesn't matter if they do absolutely nothing, they will be at fault. There's the rub - if they do something and things go wrong, if they do nothing and things go wrong, or if they do nothing and things improve the president can claim credit and hopefully for him, a political victory. His blame everybody but me playbook is going to be trotted out again for the election.