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Quote of the Day: The Feeling Grows That Obama May be One Term President


Jun 12, 2012 by

Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza who notes that the perception has started to grow that Barack Obama may be a one-term President:

It has been a Junius Horribilis for President Obama.

Job growth has stalled, the Democrats have been humiliated in Wisconsin, the attorney general is facing a contempt-of-Congress citation, talks with Pakistan have broken down, Bill Clinton is contradicting Obama, Mitt Romney is outraising him, Democrats and Republicans alike are complaining about a “cascade” of national-security leaks from his administration, and he is now on record as saying that the “private sector is doing fine.”

Could it get any worse?

Early Monday morning, Obama learned that it could. His aides delivered the news to him that his commerce secretary had been cited for a felony hit-and-run after allegedly crashing his car three times over the weekend. In one incident, the previously obscure Cabinet officer apparently rear-ended a Buick, spoke to the car’s occupants, then hit the vehicle again as he left.

Cillizza gives more details about this case but then gets to our Quote of the Day:

For the White House, it was just the latest entry in the when-it-rains-it-pours ledger. This has been one of the worst stretches of the Obama presidency. In Washington, there is a creeping sense that the bottom has fallen out and that there may be no second term. Privately, senior Obama advisers say they are no longer expecting much economic improvement before the election.

Some thoughts:

  • Remember that the conventional wisdom will shift with break-taking speed, and old CWs will be swept under the rug, as if they never existed. This, too, could fall by the wayside. But in this moment of time Cillizza is indeed articulating a perceptible shift in the underlying beliefs you can now sense in many analyses (and I’m not talking about predictable weblog left and right analyses that often spin party lines) and reporters’ questions.
  • Part of the “creeping sense” is due to the fact that Obama’s legendary political team is now looking terrible compared to Romney’s political team. It is all reacting to crises. It seems several beats behind.
  • Despite the fact money plays a big role in politics, this is no longer a story about Obama being outspent. It’s about Team Obama being outpaced, seemingly unable to political cope and losing control of not just the narrative due to factors beyond its control but how it responds to those factors.
  • You get the feeling that the Obama campaign is more than ever by the seat of its pants with no long list of worst case scenarios and game plans ready to use if worst cases come about. By the seat of your pants can also mean falling on your butt.
  • Democrats can correctly blame Republican obstructionism in Congress for contributing the country’s economic stall, but Obama seems surprisingly AWOL these days as a consistent spellbinding campaigner, rallying his party to his cause, and making a strong affirmative case for his second term. In his new book What It Takes to Win—And Hold—The White House Samuel Popkin details what incumbents need to do to hold onto the White House. Obama is NOT on track with them.

    • I’ll repeat what I have said many times over the past few years: no, Team Obama cannot be compared to the legendary political teams that helped get FDR, JFK and Bill Clinton in office. Now a series of external and self-inflicted factors are exposing the team’s underlying political weakness. Democrats must long for the days of James Carville and the War Room. This could change — but no sign of it yet.

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    7 Comments

    1. Bird Dog
      June 12, 2012 | 2:10 pm

      Joe, it wasn’t Cilliza who wrote the article. It was Milbank.

    2. The_Ohioan
      June 12, 2012 | 2:13 pm

      Don’t worry, Joe. They’re just setting you up for a Dewey/Truman finale. The Republican congress people calling for the resignation of the AG, a DOJ investigation of an FBI investigation, the resurgence of the birthers, and the urgency of purging voter files show how badly the Reps think they are doing electionwise. And the Dems don’t want to look like they are overconfident in case it’s all a wonderful fantasy.

    3. The_Ohioan
      June 12, 2012 | 2:18 pm

      Bird Dog

      That explains a lot.

    4. zephyr
      June 12, 2012 | 2:18 pm

      Given the need for instant gratification among the voting public, as well as thier short memories and attention spans, I wouldn’t be especially surprised if they chose to go out of the frying pan and into the fire.

    5. RP
      June 12, 2012 | 3:54 pm

      Had it been the case in June 2008 that people looked at a snapshot of issues that month, John NcCain would be President today.

      Nothing matters until after Labor day.

    6. StockBoyLA
      June 12, 2012 | 5:06 pm

      A lot of time between now and election day. If I were running for office I would want all the “bad stuff” to happen now, rather than wait the month before the election. That said, let’s hope Obama’s “bad stuff” all happens in the next couple of months so he can recover before the election.

      And Romney will have his turn at “bad stuff” happening to his campaign. I wonder when that will happen.

    7. zephyr
      June 13, 2012 | 2:43 am

      Good points StockBoy.