Tom Bethell: Our One-Term President
[Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).]
It's a good bet right now that Barack Obama will be a one-term president. The enthusiasm that once shielded this hyphenated American has dissipated. His supporters, although still numerous, have discovered that he lacks Bill Clinton's centrist instincts, and even his charm. The anti-Bush mania that swept the country from 2006-09 finally burned itself out.
It's always possible that the Republicans will nominate a dud. That has happened so often that it should even be considered likely. Not since 1980 has there been an outstanding GOP candidate. But at this stage it's too difficult to predict the 2012 nominee, so I'll drop that subject.
Most important from Obama's point of view is the economy. It is still in poor shape and is likely to stay that way. The unemployment picture has not brightened. In California it is 12.6 percent, while in Michigan it is 14.9 percent. In Europe, meanwhile, the economic picture ranges from uncertain to grave and I'll have more to say on that.
I was glad to hear the news media's unofficial position on Obama's prospects the other day when I bumped into an old friend, Jim Barnes, the political correspondent for National Journal. He was at a cocktail party that our esteemed publisher gave for Bob Tyrrell's excellent new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery. I last saw Barnes when he was a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in the early 1980s. He was nonpartisan then and so he remains today -- as befits the creator of National Journal's Insiders Poll. Sometimes he appears on Gwen Ifill's PBS program Washington Week, which features three or four Washington journalists who help Ms. Ifill frame the conventional wisdom of the week.
When I asked Jim Barnes about Obama's political chances he said he had heard talk of the parallel between the president's position now and that of Ronald Reagan in 1982. Reagan had been in office for a little more than a year and the economy wasn't doing so well then, either. But it recovered strongly in 1983, and of course Reagan easily won reelection. So this was a reason for Obama's supporters to look on the bright side...
Read entire article at American Spectator
It's a good bet right now that Barack Obama will be a one-term president. The enthusiasm that once shielded this hyphenated American has dissipated. His supporters, although still numerous, have discovered that he lacks Bill Clinton's centrist instincts, and even his charm. The anti-Bush mania that swept the country from 2006-09 finally burned itself out.
It's always possible that the Republicans will nominate a dud. That has happened so often that it should even be considered likely. Not since 1980 has there been an outstanding GOP candidate. But at this stage it's too difficult to predict the 2012 nominee, so I'll drop that subject.
Most important from Obama's point of view is the economy. It is still in poor shape and is likely to stay that way. The unemployment picture has not brightened. In California it is 12.6 percent, while in Michigan it is 14.9 percent. In Europe, meanwhile, the economic picture ranges from uncertain to grave and I'll have more to say on that.
I was glad to hear the news media's unofficial position on Obama's prospects the other day when I bumped into an old friend, Jim Barnes, the political correspondent for National Journal. He was at a cocktail party that our esteemed publisher gave for Bob Tyrrell's excellent new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery. I last saw Barnes when he was a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in the early 1980s. He was nonpartisan then and so he remains today -- as befits the creator of National Journal's Insiders Poll. Sometimes he appears on Gwen Ifill's PBS program Washington Week, which features three or four Washington journalists who help Ms. Ifill frame the conventional wisdom of the week.
When I asked Jim Barnes about Obama's political chances he said he had heard talk of the parallel between the president's position now and that of Ronald Reagan in 1982. Reagan had been in office for a little more than a year and the economy wasn't doing so well then, either. But it recovered strongly in 1983, and of course Reagan easily won reelection. So this was a reason for Obama's supporters to look on the bright side...