Jay Cost: He’s No Truman...

Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

A year from now, the presidential election campaign will be in full swing. Obama and the Republican nominee will be touring the country at a feverish pace, trying hard to convince swing voters to go their way. Obviously, we’re still too far out from November 2012 to know what will happen, but we’re close enough to get a sense of the shape of the race.

President Obama’s chances next year don’t look good. As of this writing, the InTrade prediction market gives the president about a 50-50 chance, and even Democratic insiders are starting to doubt the top of their ticket. According to National Journal, they’re privately giving the president just a 63 percent chance of victory, which is not a great score considering the partisan source. These relatively gloomy odds are not surprising, as the president faces some historic challenges in his reelection quest. 

Obama’s biggest problem is the economy, particularly as the typical voter experiences it. Though the recession technically ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the average American has not felt the slightest hint of a two-year “recovery.”...