MAJOR ECONOMIC HURDLE - AT 11:16 A.M. ET: The president's political future will depend heavily on whether the economy revives.  One of his chief economic advisers has some gloomy news with profound political implications.  The Politico reports:

The president’s chief economic adviser warned Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay “unacceptably high” for years to come — a situation that would seriously complicate Barack Obama’s ability to convince Americans that he’s beating back the recession.

“The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”

Summers’s comments came in a briefing with reporters ahead of Obama’s speech in New York City on Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event widely regarded as having created a panic that caused the global economic meltdown.

Even with his gloomy forecast for unemployment, Summers said the economy is getting better and made the case that Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package and other fiscal rescue steps headed off even more economic pain.

COMMENT:  Summers is a brilliant economist, and was also a great president of Harvard before being brought down by the forces of political correctness.  if his forecast is correct, we may be facing a "jobless recovery," which, to most Americans, is no recovery at all. 

Politically, this is very bad news for the president.  The unemployment rate is the human side of the recession, the one most voters look at. 

September 12, 2009