March 9, 2011

Is the President Really in Good Shape for Re-Election?

The media tend to be filled with many items that are either untrue or obvious. Last week – from Politico to cable television, from Karl Rove to Mike Huckabee – was a moment for the obvious to be stated and restated: “The GOP should not underestimate how hard it will be to defeat President Obama next November; indeed, he has to be considered the favorite to win the next presidential election.” True.

Of course, the same thing could have been (and was) said about President Lyndon Johnson in the spring of 1967 and about Jimmy Carter in the spring of 1979. Every incumbent president is the most formidable political force in the country. Even a deeply wounded president must be seen as formidable – as Thomas Dewey learned to his regret in 1948 when President Harry Truman won the election even though the Democratic Party had been split three ways (both the pacifist left and the segregationist faction split off and ran their own candidates – Henry Wallace ran on the Progressive ticket, Strom Thurmond ran on the Dixiecrat ticket.)

The media tend to be filled with many items that are either untrue or obvious. Last week – from Politico to cable television, from Karl Rove to Mike Huckabee – was a moment for the obvious to be stated and restated: “The GOP should not underestimate how hard it will be to defeat President Obama next November; indeed, he has to be considered the favorite to win the next presidential election.” True.

Of course, the same thing could have been (and was) said about President Lyndon Johnson in the spring of 1967 and about Jimmy Carter in the spring of 1979. Every incumbent president is the most formidable political force in the country. Even a deeply wounded president must be seen as formidable – as Thomas Dewey learned to his regret in 1948 when President Harry Truman won the election even though the Democratic Party had been split three ways (both the pacifist left and the segregationist faction split off and ran their own candidates – Henry Wallace ran on the Progressive ticket, Strom Thurmond ran on the Dixiecrat ticket.)

In 1967-68, no prominent Democratic candidate – including Sen. Robert Kennedy – was prepared to take on a Vietnam War politically wounded Lyndon Johnson until the unlikely Eugene McCarthy got 42 percent in the New Hampshire primary. Kennedy then got in, and LBJ announced he would not run for re-election.

And in 1980, Ronald Reagan was actually running 8 points down in the Gallup Poll in October 1980 (only weeks before the election he eventually won by 10 percent more of the popular vote than incumbent Jimmy Carter).

It is also a truism of American politics for the out party’s primary contenders to be seen as not presidential. They are often disparaged as “the seven dwarfs,” or lacking presidential stature, or too right-wing or unknown.

And last week was also the moment for prominent and respected Republicans (George Will and former Gov. John Sununu) to pronounce various of the likely Republican contenders unfit for nomination or election to the presidency. But then, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were all written off as either unelectable or unfit by various prominent members of their respective parties. They all ended up being respectfully called “Mr. President,” often by the very people who disparaged their chances a year before.

So, yes, of course, Republicans should not take lightly the challenge of defeating Obama. On the other hand, rarely has an incumbent president presided over a more dangerous world with a foreign policy so manifestly adrift.

Nor, since FDR, has an incumbent president been re-elected with the electorate feeling – and with good cause – so profoundly pessimistic about our nation’s current and future economic health. (As described in the liberal Slate digital magazine by Annie Lowrey, “13.7 million Americans remain out of work. At the current rate of job growth, it would take more than a decade for the United States to get back to an unemployment rate of 5 percent. There are 6.6 million fewer Americans working today than there were three years ago. Blacks, whites, teenagers, the elderly, women, men, high-school dropouts, grad-school graduates – every demographic group has unemployment close to historical highs. About 6 million Americans form a new pool of the long-term unemployed, whose prospects in the labor market remain very dim. …”

“The average duration of unemployment rose to a new high of 37.1 weeks. The labor-force participation rate is at a 25-year low. Unemployment has never been so high for so long, not since the Great Depression.”) And that is after the good news on employment last week.

But, at least as threatening to the president’s re-election is the unfolding of foreign dangers. Governments often change their foreign policies – but rarely does a public have the chance to observe such change so openly as we are seeing currently with the White House’s Middle East “democracy” policy.

In his Cairo speech in 2009, the President seemed to be encouraging democracy. Then, when Iranians protested a phony election, there was little support for them from the administration as they were being murdered in the street.

As Egyptians started protesting this year, the White House, endorsing “democracy,” was seen to quickly undercut 30-year ally Mubarak.

(By the way, over this weekend, according to the Assyrian International News Agency, – hat tip to American Thinker – several thousand Muslims have attacked Christian houses and places of worship in a town just 30 miles from Cairo. The fate of the clerics who worked at the church is unknown – they may have been detained as hostages or burned to death in the fire. The violence was the result of a Christian dating a Muslim woman. I trust the mob that attacked the Christians were not part of the “democracy” crowd on whose behalf we undercut Mubarak.)

Then, when the egregious Gadhafi started shooting and dive-bombing demonstrators, the White House was very late to call for his ouster. All this policy confusion has been brutally reported in a much-commented-on Wall Street Journal article last week, “U.S. Wavers on ‘Regime Change’”:

“After weeks of internal debate on how to respond to uprisings in the Arab world, the Obama administration is settling on a Middle East strategy: help keep longtime allies who are willing to reform in power, even if that means the full democratic demands of their newly emboldened citizens might have to wait… the U.S. is urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling ‘regime alteration,’” rather than regime change.

None of this confusion will be electorally significant for President Obama if the world does not experience badly damaging events between now and November 2012.

But, of course, at this point in Jimmy Carter’s presidency (in March 1979), the Soviet Union had not yet invaded Afghanistan, and our diplomats had not yet been taken hostage in Iran. And despite a rough economy and sense of national malaise, Carter was odds on favorite to be re-elected.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.