Does O Stand for One Term?
Posted in Presidency by Peter Lawler
Here's an analyst who doesn't think Barack can get re-elected. That's because the economy going to stay really bad, and Obama doesn't really have any plan to return us to prosperity. My own view is that it's impossible to know, and the eventual return to prosperity probably won't be driven by any government plan. As NLT bloggers have often point out, FDR's plans didn't really return us to prosperity, but confidence in him grew anyway. His "positive" or policy-based landslide of 1936 dwarfed his "negative" landslide of 1932. In any case, we should hope things get better, even if Obama gets the credit.
This election was a lot like 1980 and 1932. The victories of Reagan and FDR were both repudiations of the clueless incumbent and affirmations of their personal qualities of leadership. 1936 and 1984 were ratifications of the CHANGE they were responsible for in the country's direction. Obama is clearly thinking BIG CHANGE that will be rewarded by a similarly positive reelection landslide.
5:00 PM / November 11, 2008
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Mr. Lawler
This analysis makes a lot of sense. You should quit stumping for Romney/Rockefeller's and stick with stuff like this.
1936 and 1984 were ratifications of the CHANGE they were responsible for in the country’s direction. Obama is clearly thinking BIG CHANGE that will be rewarded by a similarly positive reelection landslide.
Oh dear. Perhaps that Apocalypse bunker is not such a bad idea after all...;)
A little pointless speculation,
1. Contingency matters alot. The depth of the present Republican predicament is at least as attributable to the mismanagement of the Iraq War as to any long term factors of ideology, demography or political strategy. That doesn't mean those latter things should be ingored, it is just that Obama's reelection prospects will be greatly influenced by decisions he hasn't yet made in response to events that have not yet occurred.
2. The current economic downturn is in part cyclical and cyclical factors would point to at least a partial upturn by 2012. Obama would have to be truly awful or truly unlucky for the economy of 2012 to not be better than the economy of 2009.
3. My inital impression from Obama's transition is that he will try to buy the love of business through government bailouts and get the support of liberal interest groups like unions and enviormentalists through regulation (often detrimental to the same bussinesses). It is an interesting plan. Many large businesses become beholden to the government (and Obama gets to have a cadre of CEOs telling everyone how pro business and pro jobs the new President is), while liberal interest groups get what they want without the cost coming out of the federal treasury. The consumers still pay but Obama can hope that he avoids the blame.
4. Foreign policy might be more important in 2012 than in either 1936 of 1984. In 1936 FDR only had to reassure people that he wasn't going to get involved in that weird stuff in Europe and foreign policy was off the table. In 1984, the American position in the world was so much better than in 1980 that foreign policy was an edge for Reagan.
5. It looks like the Senate Republicans will have enough votes to filibuster. They should use it to prevent any major statist change in the health care market. But they must also learn how to sell a more market friendly healthcare policy. Its not going to happen in the next four years, but the public needs to become familiar with the arguments in favor of such a proposal. That might be a major goal of the new RNC chief - whoever that might be.
6. A politics of nostalgia is not going to work for Republicans. Most people don't want to hear about how Republicans are going "back to their roots". That doesn't mean they should go Left. But Republicans should focus alot more on explaining how particular conservative policies address people's real problems.
Maybe the base could be roused in 2012 if you ran with Cressbeckler!!