Simply put, I don't buy the assumptions behind this criticism/defense. The President of the United States is not the "Economy Czar" or "Job-Creation Ombudsperson" of the United States. "Creating" jobs is not his primary job. Nor is it is secondary or tertiary job.
He doesn't sit in an Economy Control Room at the center of the Earth flipping switches and twisting dials to make "The Economy" good. He can't "create" jobs or "grow" the economy by Focusing Like A Laser On it, nor does a bad economy / slow job growth mean he hasn't Focused enough on the problem. (In the particular case of Bush, the economic situation has been affected primarily by two and only two large factors: (1) dot-com crash, (2) 9/11. Compared to these two factors, whatever Bush has or hasn't done is peanuts.)
Don't get me wrong. All other things being equal I want jobs and the economy to increase under this Presidency or any other; I want milk and honey to flow and people to be fat and happy. And to be sure, the policies pursued by a President *can* affect the economy this way and that, although it's by no means and very seldom an ironclad, conscious, cause-and-effect kind of thing. It's just that "the economy" is not the President's main responsibility. Nowhere in the Constitution will you find "growing the economy" or "creating jobs" listed among his duties. As far as I'm concerned it's well down there on the list.
And basically, if you are voting against a President because (a) you got unemployed under that President, (b) you read some newspaper and it published such-and-such numbers which made you think his "job record" is bad even though you yourself still have a job; or, conversely, if you are voting for a President because (c) you got a job / stayed employed under that President, or (d) although you yourself don't have a job you think his "job record" was good according to whatever numbers were published / spouted by pundits.... then I think you're an irresponsible voter.
Such considerations (neither your private job situation, nor some bogus fuzzy macroeconomic statistics which you heard on TV) should not be the determining factor in whether or not you vote for a President.
In the case of people who were personally unemployed under a President, I can understand the emotions behind "punishing" him by voting against him however. But in the case of people (pundits, talking heads, political junkies...) who endlessly discuss these gross macroeconomic Numbers and Statistics (which nobody really knows with any accuracy), arguing over them and tossing them back and forth, with the bizarre implication that whether the Number is X or Y should affect how I vote, I have to draw the line.
I don't buy the whole thing as a valid issue in the first place.