On Sunday The New York Daily News, the second largest daily newspaper in metropolitan New York and fourth largest in the entire country, endorsed Mitt Romney for President. In 2008 the Daily News endorsed Barack Obama.

It was a stunning move by the traditionally liberal newspaper, but one that its editors felt “compelled” to take. “Four years after endorsing Obama,” they said, “News finds the hopes of those days went unfulfilled.” In the lengthy editorial, the News elaborated on its bill of particulars against Obama:

Revival of the U.S. as a land of opportunity and upward mobility is the central challenge facing the next President. The question for Americans: Who is more likely to accomplish the mission — Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?

Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.

The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.

Achingly slow job creation has left the U.S. with 4.3 million fewer positions than provided incomes to Americans in 2007. Half the new jobs have been part-time, lower-wage slots, a trend that has ruinously sped a hollowing of the middle class.

The official unemployment rate stands at 7.9%, marking only the second month below 8% after 43 months above that level. Worse, add people who are working part-time because they have no better choice and the rate leaps to almost 15%. Still worse, add 8 million people who have given up looking for employment and the number who are out of jobs or who are cobbling together hours to scrape by hits some 23 million people. . .

The trend over the Obama years: Goodbye to middle- and high-income jobs in New York City; hello to positions that pay less than $45,000 a year. . .

After originally projecting that the program would produce 4 million more jobs than the country now has, along with a 5% jobless rate, Obama pleads that he saved Americans from more dire straits.
Next came Obamacare. While the country bled jobs, the President battled to establish universal health insurance — without first restraining soaring medical bills. Then he pushed one of the largest social programs in U.S. history through a Democratic-controlled Congress without a single Republican vote.

R.I.P. and never to be resurrected — Obama’s promised bipartisanship.

While the legislation has yet to take full effect, the typical family’s health insurance premium has risen and many businesses will experience a hike of $70 per week per employee, further restraining wages or producing part-time jobs that lack coverage.

Next came trillion-dollar deficits. Deep in the hole thanks to former President George W. Bush, Obama helped run up a $5 trillion increase in the national debt.

Along the way, he appointed a bipartisan commission to devise a plan for restoring America’s fiscal health, but he abandoned the panel’s menu of spending cuts, entitlement reductions and tax reform. Finally, Obama failed to close a deal with Republican House Speaker John Boehner for budgetary discipline and a path to job creation.

That was 15 months ago. Since then, Obama has presided over paralysis. . .

Romney’s approach is the stronger.

Critically, he has tailored his policies to create jobs, jobs, jobs. . .

The presidential imperative of the times is to energize the economy and get deficits under control to empower the working and middle classes to again enjoy the fruits of an ascendant America.

So The News is compelled to stand with Romney.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the Daily News endorsement comes six days into another example of the Obama administration’s inability to get the job done taking place in the metropolitan area it serves. Though the editorial makes no mention of President Obama’s poor handling of the federal response to Hurricane Sandy, the editors may well have been influenced in their decision by the hard evidence of Presidential incompetence they’ve witnessed on their front doorstep this past week.