Then: JournoList, founded the Washington Post’s own Ezra Klein (who declared Obama’s stump speeches were rhapsodic Sermons from the Mount) promises that anyone who stands in candidate Obama’s way will be smeared as racists.
Now? “One and Done: To be a great president, Obama should not seek reelection in 2012:”
President Obama must decide now how he wants to govern in the two years leading up to the 2012 presidential election.
AdvertisementThis is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.
To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.
If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock, at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.
The best way for him to address both our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next two years, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as Americans, rather than the politics of the moment – or of the 2012 campaign.
Quite simply, given our political divisions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incompatible. Obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the consultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president’s political prospects.
Obama himself once said to Diane Sawyer: “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” He now has the chance to deliver on that idea.
The Politico, another former bastion of the JournoLista adds:
“People wanted to get rid of Bush in 2004, but they just couldn’t buy into Kerry,” said Colorado-based Democratic consultant Mike Stratton. “So effectively running against a guy who was hugely unpopular was greatly to Obama’s advantage.”
“A ton of people who were for him just hated Bush,” added Jonathan Prince, another veteran Democratic strategist.
Prince suggested that the 2008 race didn’t represent a shift from the red-and-blue trends but reflected the voters’ response to a deeply unpopular president and a lackluster GOP nominee.
“All the anger that built up favored the Democratic side and opportunities opened up that don’t normally happen and shouldn’t happen,” he said.The three most extraordinary wins came in Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana — none of which had been carried by a Democrat presidential candidate in decades.
Yet, the swing voters who lifted Obama in these states — which are likely to have a combined 39 electoral votes in 2012 — wholeheartedly supported the GOP last week, leading local party officials to warn that Democrats must find a way to appeal to the political center again if they expect to compete there in two years.
“It’ll be more difficult,” conceded Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker, adding that Obama must make progress on job creation and deficit reduction to win back the moderates who fled the party last week.
What worries Parker, though, is the view among some liberals that the party shouldn’t tolerate the sort of centrist Democrats who populate the Hoosier State.
“Does the Democratic Party want to be a progressive party or a majority party?” he asked, lamenting “the vilification of moderate Democrats.”
A little late for that, eh fellas?
Finally, John Podhoretz looks at primary challengers on both sides of aisle, ranging from Eugene McCarthy in ’68, Teddy Kennedy in ’80, to Ronald Reagan in ’76 and Pat Buchanan in ’92 and writes:
It became common in the days following the election for conservatives and Republicans to say that the GOP should consider itself “on probation.” That is certainly true. But viewing the election as a warning shot to Republicans—which, astonishingly, Obama sought to do in his press conference the day after the voting by saying the election was a “message to Republicans” to “focus on our shared responsibilities and work together”—is wrong. The election was a referendum on left-liberal governance. Voters rejected it, and rejected it with even more of a vengeance than Democrats had shown in undertaking it.
That is why it matters just how deep and thoroughgoing the results were. It wasn’t just that voters wanted to punish Obama and the Washington Democrats because the economy was sour, or because they spent too much, or because they didn’t keep their eye on the ball when they took up health care.
Voters wanted to take governing power away from Democrats at all levels before liberals did more damage.
Presidents in political peril have proved capable of winning over parts of the electorate that had rejected them earlier. Nixon received only 43 percent of the vote in 1968 before going on to score 61 percent in 1972; Clinton got 43 percent in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996. Obama is in a better position than either of them because he needs only the voters who voted for him in 2008 to vote for him again in 2012. That is a tall order because of the way independents deserted the Democrats in November. It is not, however, unthinkable.
But what if the disaffection with Obama comes not only from the right, as was the case in this election, but also from his left? That is where a challenge from Russ Feingold or Howard Dean or someone else will be telling. Ever since Obama took office, leftists have issued complaints against him that, to the non-leftist ear, sound insane.
They claim he has been too moderate, too compromising, too much of a technocrat. They say the $863 billion stimulus was too small by half—an assertion impossible to prove, and pointless in any case, since the stimulus that did become law was as large as the political system in Washington controlled entirely by Democrats could stomach. Liberals were and are angry that Obama gave up the so-called public option on health care, when he had no choice but to do so to win Democratic support to get the bill through the Senate.
In point of fact, Obama has done everything in his power to advance the most unshakably leftist agenda since Johnson’s time, and possibly since the days of Franklin Roosevelt—with remarkable results. He should be celebrated by liberals and the left, not criticized by them, and certainly not abandoned by them. If Obama is indeed threatened by a candidate who comes at him from the left and who gains some traction doing so, that will suggest two things. First, that members of his own base are picking up the scent of a loser from him. And second, that many on the left will prefer to abandon a president they should be hailing as a tough-minded hero rather than confront the stark reality that the American electorate got a good look at what the left truly wants this country to become—and said, with a clarion’s clarity, no.
Which the far left is unable to process (call it epistemic closure, to coin a phrase), hence all of the talk of branding, marketing, communication and attacking the voters, rather than confront their own tone-deaf and increasingly sclerotic worldview.
Related: Purge! Purify! Banish heretics to Siberia!
The facts that work against a challenge from the left in 2012 is that the African-American voting block is key for Democrats not just at the presidential level, but in down-ballot races in a number of important swing states, and that alienating them with a divisive primary battle would result in a major depression in African-American turnout or even defections to the Republicans in the general election.
The facts that work for it are that people like Dean, Kucinich, etc., are so egotistical and self assured of their own beliefs and powers of persuasion, they probably would think they could spend 8-10 months savaging Obama as unfit to remain in office during the primary campaign, and the turn around and still collect 95 percent of the African-America vote in the 2012 general election, with the same turnout levels of African-American voters as in 2008.
Blacks will stick with Obama even if he married a woman then almost decapitated her, and one of her friends, as she tried to enter her house, and even though she was the mother of his children.
“Voters wanted to take governing power away from Democrats at all levels before liberals did more damage.”
PJ O’Rourke said best: “it is not so much an election as a restraining order”
Yes.
All right, it’s now official: Democrats think that parliamentary democracies are a better way to govern than constitutional republics. If the US were a parliamentary democracy, there could now — right away — be a no-confidence vote and a new general election. Obama would be history and in a few weeks there would be a new president (excuse me, prime minister) with a new mandate. I wonder whether the Washington Post editorialists realized when they wrote this “one-term” editorial that parliamentary democracy had in effect just become their favorite form of government.
If the Republicans are smart(and there are no indications that they are) 2011 can be turned into Stalingrad for the Democrats. Black Dem candidates all over the country were pressured to drop out of races to benefit white establishment progressives. Florida was the salient example. White progressives like Klein now demand “The One” step down in order for them to retain their power base. Simply stated; rank and file moderate Democrat whites will NOT vote again for Obama and black Dems will NEVER, EVER vote for the person (Hillary) that prematurely replaces him, and most likely never vote Democrat again. The Republicans must drive that racial wedge(created by the Dems themselves) into the heart of the Democrat Party. Racial division should be used to eradicate the Democrat Party in the next 2 years. Their 2012 convention can be made into the death knell for socialism. As they say; if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Of course, the Tea Party Movement should, can, and will remain above the fray. The question remains; why do establishment white progressives hate and use Blacks so strongly?….Hey, is that snow I see starting to fall??
I do hope nobody takes Schoen and Caddell (the Post editorial) at face value. What you see here is a preliminary softening of the 2011 primary battlespace, in which the (largely Clintonista) old guard just took their first swipe at the unicorns-and-granola crowd. The old boy sleaze-left got a bit fat and slow, and they took a sucker punch last time. Now they’re not only torqued about that, they can smell disaster for the whole scam. On the other hand, the child-left got their marvelous toy, at last, at long long last! But a child’s attention moves on, you know.
By next summer this’ll be good sport. Who ya’ got?
In other words, liberals want an excuse to withdraw their support of Obama without having to say, “Sorry, you were right, he’s been a disaster.”
Bingo!
“To be a great president” Obama shouldn’t run for reelection? If they really thought he has the potential to be a great president wouldn’t they want him to run for reelection? Wouldn’t his reelection be in the national interest if he’s that great? Wouldn’t they be working to help him regain the consent of the governed so we won’t miss a minute of his greatness?
No, they don’t think he’s great and they don’t think he has the potential to be great. They know he’s a disaster and they’re right that he’s lost the consent of the governed, but they’re terrified of the circular firing squad that would be precipitated by any attempt to force him out, so they’re looking for the easy way out.
It’s going to be an interesting couple of years….
I think the country’s Obama fatigue is now so deep nothing can shake it off. His political weakness and general incompetence will continue feeding on one another until only blacks and some fraction of the left remain loyal. This will become apparent by next summer, particularly if some unexpected shock hits us. The next two years will be tough ones for him and the prospect of four after that uninviting even for someone for whom the White House is the pinnacle of bling. Obama’s emotional fragility, till now hidden by the mask of icy detachment, may very well prove disabling.
“The WaPo Shivs The One”
This headline is a bit disingenuous. The WaPo didn’t do something to Obama here, any more than it does something every time a George Will column runs.
I mean, I suppose you could argue it has agency for running the Schoen-Caddell piece. But custom dictates that we attribute positions to publications only when they are expressed by the publication’s own editorial board.
He’d better run in 2012, so that he can take the beating he deserves.
I’m not sure I follow the post’s reasoning – obama/dems got blasted because of their leftist america coming to life, so the only way to help the country is to focus on pursuit of more leftist visions, without the distraction of running for re-election? I guess the post really does think they’re our betters and we just don’t understand what’s good for us.
… aaand this is what happens when you use a headline like “The WaPo Does X”:
“I’m not sure I follow the post’s reasoning”
It’s not the Post’s reasoning. It’s the reasoning of two political consultants who wrote an op-ed.
I’ve heard of buyers’ remorse, but… sleazy, used-car-salesmans’ remorse?
They wanted him, they got him. And they got him by helping to bury any story that would have painted an ACCURATE picture of Obama, but that would have prevented the electioneering of THE ONE.
SELLER’S remorse is what this is. They have been hoisted by their own identity politics. They managed to convince themselves that, if they only had the right candidate, they could convince the country to shift to the far left. They believed, erroneously, that a smooth-talking snake-oil salesman, could paper over FUNDAMENTAL differences between the center-right and the far left.
Let us play this scenario out a little further…..
Obama recognizes that his chances of successfully getting re-elected in 2012 are small to nonexistant. So he approaches the Clintons and offers to cut a deal by 12/31/2011. The deal is structured as follows:
Biden agrees to resign as VPOTUS in consideration of receiving an appointment to the position of Secretary of State.
Hilary Clinton agrees both to resign as Secretary of State and to accept an appointment to the office of VPOTUS.
Once Hilary is sworn into office as VPOTUS, Obama tenders his resignation as POTUS. The resignantion is effective 12/31/2011.
Hilary is sworn into the position of POTUS on 01/01/2012.
Her first act as President is to convince Ban Moon to resign as UN General Secretary. In Ban Moon resigns, then Presigent Hilary Clinton persaudes the UN to elect Obama as General Secretary.
Obama gets his ideal job. We get rid of Obama one year early. The Democrats get a realistic chance of holding on to the Presidency. The GOP gets to run against Hilary in the 2012 election when all the African-American voters decide to stay at home because the “white bitch” screwed the black man. The MSM gets to make money following hte storey and Wall Street and Main Street get the ‘BOY WONDER’ or ‘ Man -Child’out of the Oval Office before he succeeds in wrecking the US economy.
The Muslim Brotherhood gets a the CIA NOCK list.
Israel gets to nuke Iran.
“Presigent Hilary Clinton persaudes the UN to elect Obama as General Secretary.”
Right now even other countries see Obama as a loser. If he resigns simply due to political pressure, that’ll make him look worse. It ain’t gonna happen.
But it’s WAY too early for speculations like this. A lot can happen in 2 years, as the mid-terms just showed us.
Close — but no Christmas Box.
I reckon, effective September 2011, he resigns for “health” reasons (terminal Narcissism aggravated by the pathological loathing of his female eunuch) and Plugs Biden (who may be as close to functionally retarded as is Patty Murray and as moronic as Barbara Boxer but at least doesn’t hate us) gets the gig. The recidivist, treasonous, lying, looting, mass-murdering, co-serial rapist dumbest woman to ever take a dump between two shoes, AKA Missus Billy-Bubbah Blythe, (“Cli’ton”) gets only the sack.
Ed,
This is a subtle hint, “Quit or we will bust a scandal on you so huge that neither you nor your party will recover for decades.”
Some hints on the scandal here:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/11/can-you-believe-what-he-is-doing-today.html
The “American Race Problem” has created a new and interesting challenge. Until the last decade, black leaders were – in the political world – leaders of blacks. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, members of the congressional Black Caucus, were leaders in a world where the followers were black, or elected from districts that were created for them for the purpose of racial homogeneity via Gerrymandering. The thought of replacing any of these men or women with a “white” person in simply inconceivable. Replace Jackson or Sharpton with … Michael Moore (to pick someone who shares their views)? The question is simply silly. Their ethnicity may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.
In politics that situation has changed. To bring two examples to the fore, we now we have a black President and a black Republican Party chairman. And both have lost the confidence of many of their followers. Both want to hold on to their jobs for another term and both have a card that no white candidate can play: the race card.
For black followers of Barack Obama, which appears to include well over 90% of the black population, his critics are racists. I was sent a copy of a newspaper article by a retired black teacher which appears to reflect her views. These views include the assumption that Barack Obama’s life is in danger because he’s black. Andrew Manis, Associate Professor of History at Macon State College said he was so concerned about that:
First, every day that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice.
Professor Manis is white. My correspondent is black. Can you imagine the reaction from them and millions of others if the Democrats, fearing a continuation of the electoral catastrophe that began this year, decided to try to deny Barack Obama the nomination for a second term? The Democrats – who are now of the opinion that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing – are caught in a vice of their own creation. They absolutely need a monolithic black vote to win national elections so they cannot antagonize that part of their coalition. Having an incompetent, unpopular black man as their leader puts them in a virtually impossible situation which they are trying to wriggle out of. The article in the Washington Post Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell is the answer that would – mostly – get them off the hook. But the “Lightworker” whose election would cause the seas to recede and the earth to cool is not that kind of man. But in case they have not noticed, it’s not about them, it’s about him.
Michael Steele is a problem for Republicans. He was elected to be the Republican Party Chairman in part to prove that Republicans were every bit as inclusive as Democrats. Steele is a politician and, like many politicians he likes the spotlight. He has had the unfortunate habit of putting his foot in his mouth too often. Party chairmen should neither be seen nor heard. Their job is to raise money and to tend to the party machinery. It now appears that Steele is prepared to play the race card if he does not get a second term. Since his tenure as chairman has not seen an increase in Republican support in the black community, Steele’s hold on the Chairmanship is much less secure. For whites, the accusations of racism – thanks to the rants of Professor Manis and other like him – has lost much of its sting. “You’re calling me a racist? Whatever.” Still, we can be sure that the Liberal community and their megaphones in the MSM will be sure to make the case that Steele is being dripped because he’s black.
There are things that are so emotionally charged that they are immune to logic. Race is one and religion is another. People who have been seeking a secular savior – someone who looks like them – will not let him go even if he brings misery to his people. That’s the hold the First-Black-President™ has on the overwhelming majority of the black community. To give another example, the photo “Piss Christ,” like a lot of Andres Serrano’s work product is – when stripped of its appeal to emotion – not much more than a blurry image in various shades of yellow. A visitor from Mars would wonder not just what all the fuss was all about but why it was put on exhibit in the first place. Only a Christian would have an emotional reaction and be offended. So it is with the new class of black political leaders. If they become leaders due to their race – as Obama was in part – they create a racial crisis if they are found wanting.
As I have said in the past, Barack Obama may well be the worst thing that has happened to the black community since the days of Jim Crow. Many view him as a test case. This is a problem that will not go away until another generation passes away. I always thought that the Bible verse about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children was unfair. As I have grown much older, I see it’s just the truth.
Tom I think is technically correct that Schoen and Caddell are responsible and not the WaPo and its editorial board. That is the customary rule for op eds – they are not necessarily the view of management. For example neither Charles Krauthammer nor David Brooks generally reflect the liberal views of their respective newspapers. But I think there is a strong case for agency here. Schoen and Daddell are two Democrats writing in a paper that has strongly supported the president. Just by publishing it they are putting their weight as a major player in the liberal press behind what would otherwise be intramural party gossip. To raise it to the level of an op ed is to undermine both this president and the institution of the presidency itself – something the press and both parties have been guilty of since Watergate. It is remarkable and I believe Mr. Driscoll has appropriately remarked. Therefor, I don’t think the headline is disingenuous. In fact I think it would be appropriate the next time the President sees someone from the WaPo to quip: “Et tu, Brute?”
Lorenz,
I appreciate the considered response. But I think your argument is stealing a few bases. Or begging the question, in the logical sense. You’re basically asserting that this particular op-ed speaks for the Washington Post simply because the Washington Post published it. You haven’t shown why this op-ed is different from any other; you’ve simply offered a series of assumptions and leaps about the paper’s motivations.
Your argument ultimately doesn’t hold up logically. You call the WaPo a “major player in the liberal press.” Yet the WaPo publishes George Will. So maybe the WaPo is actually a major player in the conservative press? Ahh, you say — but George Will’s column doesn’t speak for the WaPo. And I respond: Why not? How do Schoen-Caddell speak for the WaPo, but not George Will? And you say: Well, because the WaPo is a major liberal player. And I say: But it publishes George Will; maybe it’s actually a major conservative player… And around and around we go.
At any rate, logic aside, my basic point is about custom: that it is not customary to ascribe a publication’s voice to op-ed pieces. Even if the editors of the Washington Post happen to agree 100% with every word written by Schoen and Caddell, it’s still not their piece. It’s not their doing. It’s not their shivving.
Ah Tom, I don’t think you can get the blood entirely off the WaPo’s hands. I took up your original proposition that there was an argument for agency in this case. I will spell it out in more detail. Because Schoen and Caddell are not regular columnists and are both Democrats, it is a greater attack on the president to choose to publish their ‘shiv piece’ than when Charles Krauthammer publishes a piece critical of the president. At the same time I would agree that it is NOT the same as if the WaPo itself had called for the president to not run for reelection. It is somewhere in between. That is the beauty of guest Op Eds – the newspaper can throw a bomb indirectly. That is what I think happened here. Therefore I think Ed Driscoll was justified writing a headline ignoring the distinction under discussion. – ignoring such distinctions is, after all, the custom of headline writers. He would be disingenuous – or maybe just plain silly – if he used the same headline to comment on a piece of Krauthhammer’s attacking the president.
Finally I don’t want to lose sight of what I think is important here: a leading US newspaper long supportive of President Obama has published an op-ed that calls for him to be a one term president, after two years in office! What interests me here as an observer of the media is the speed with which the MSNM have apparently started throwing bombs. I’m not a supporter of the President but I don’t think he deserved this kind of piece from his own party or the leading Washington paper. I think it was very premature of the WaPo to publish this kind of material even as a guest op-ed. Yes, politics are changing, but so is the newspaper business. I don’t know what is going on here, but this little op ed has made me perk up my ears.