In less than three years since his election was seen as the nation’s triumph over its own history, a combination of his own shortcomings, crushing economic challenges that destabilized the electorate and residual racism has put Barack Hussein Obama in danger of becoming a one-term president.

At his birth 50 years ago, his parents’ marriage was illegal in 16 states of the Union. Now, at the low point of his tenure in the nation’s highest office, the President is still seen as illegitimate by millions of Americans. (No other has been the target of a Birther controversy and polls showing large numbers of voters think he’s a Muslim.)

Yet, for all that prejudice and a drumbeat of accusations that he is a closet radical, Barack Obama’s birthday woes ironically stem even more from his own political misjudgments in acting as a mainstream mediator rather than a strong leader.

If there was anything his “Change” supporters expected, it was the kind of determination he showed in pushing through a badly needed stimulus bill over wall-to-wall Republican opposition (only three in the Senate and none in the House voted for it) as the first President in memory not given even a brief “honeymoon” by the other party.

Yet, after that adamant opposition was clear, Barack Obama made two crucial mistakes—-the strategic one of devoting 2009 to health care reform rather than job creation and compounding it with the tactical error of not pushing a plan of his own but letting Congress in an ugly spectacle that disgusted voters produce a 2000-page abortion, which the GOP converted into the political weapon of “Obamacare” that helped spawn the Tea Party.

Even after that, the President has been a slow learner…

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