Fore more years?

Posted on September 18, 2011 by myiq2xu (D)

Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune:

Why Obama should withdraw

When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, his slogan was “Morning in America.” For Barack Obama, it’s more like midnight in a coal mine.

The sputtering economy is about to stall out, unemployment is high, his jobs program may not pass, foreclosures are rampant and the poor guy can’t even sneak a cigarette.

[...]

Administration officials get weary after four years and leave in droves. The junior varsity has to be put into service. New ideas are hard to come by.

Someone said that when a man is smitten with a beautiful woman, he should remember that somebody somewhere is tired of her. Likewise, the most inspiring presidents get stale after years of constant overexposure.

In the event he wins, Obama could find himself with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress. Then he will long for the good old days of 2011. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner will bound out of bed each day eager to make his life miserable.

Besides avoiding this indignity, Obama might do his party a big favor. In hard times, voters have a powerful urge to punish incumbents. He could slake this thirst by stepping aside and taking the blame. Then someone less reviled could replace him at the top of the ticket.

The ideal candidate would be a figure of stature and ability who can’t be blamed for the economy. That person should not be a member of Congress, since it has an even lower approval rating than the president’s.

It would also help to be conspicuously associated with prosperity. Given Obama’s reputation for being too quick to compromise, a reputation for toughness would be an asset.

As it happens, there is someone at hand who fits this description: Hillary Clinton. Her husband presided over a boom, she’s been busy deposing dictators instead of destroying jobs, and she’s never been accused of being a pushover.

Not only that, Clinton is a savvy political veteran who already knows how to run for president. Oh, and a new Bloomberg poll finds her to be merely “the most popular national political figure in America today.”

If he runs for re-election, Obama may find that the only fate worse than losing is winning. But he might arrange things so it will be Clinton who has the unenviable job of reviving the economy, balancing the budget, getting out of Afghanistan and grappling with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Obama, meanwhile, will be on a Hawaiian beach, wrestling the cap off a Corona.

If Obama quits he won’t have to face losing his last campaign. He will still be the historic first black POTUS, and history will likely be kind to him because he inherited a mess even Hercules would have trouble cleaning up.

If he is reelected he is unlikely to get any significant policy victories, and even if the economy recovers before he leaves office it will be lost in the shuffle of the race to replace him.

No matter what happens Obama will always be a lifetime member of a very exclusive club. He can spend the rest of his life reading speeches and playing golf, and Michelle can quit playing a Stepford wife and go on a permanent vacation.

Meanwhile Hillary can start cleaning up the mess. It would be a win-win for everybody.

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30 Responses

  1. Mary, on September 18, 2011 at 11:55 am said:

    Hear! Hear!

    But it’s not gonna happen. The Democratic Party doesn’t have the courage.

    Ain’t what they used to be. :)

  2. Dario, on September 18, 2011 at 11:56 am said:

    Quit Obama! Quit now!

  3. Mimi, on September 18, 2011 at 12:03 pm said:

    There is something weird about a hometown (conservative) paper calling for an incumbent prez to throw in the towel. It sets off my spidey sense. Is there another scandal about to break and drag in Chicago that they would just as soon avoid? Are they even sicker of Obama than we mere mortals are?

  4. myiq2xu, on September 18, 2011 at 12:04 pm said:

    Hot Air:

    Even if Obama appeared to retire on his own a la LBJ, there would be a significant number of Democrats who would believe he’d been pushed — and pushed out by the Clintons and their clique. It’s no secret that Obama wanted to keep the Clintons at as much arms-length as he possibly could. He has not included Bill Clinton very often in official efforts even though Obama could clearly benefit from Clinton’s skills, and on the one memorable occasion where Obama called on the former President, Clinton ended up taking over the stage. Hillary would appeal to the voters Obama is losing — suburban families in the Rust Belt and Midwest — but a palace coup in the Democratic Party could split the hard-Left progressives and would certainly poison the relationship between the Democratic Party and black voters.

    • ralphb, on September 18, 2011 at 12:49 pm said:

      Right, so the Dems should just go ahead and lose out of a fear that they “might?” lose their most loyal constituents. I don’t believe it for a minute.

      While this scenario has almost no chance of happening, the Dems have nothing to fear but fear itself. With the Dems, that’s probably enough.

      • 1539days, on September 18, 2011 at 1:19 pm said:

        Clinton knew that losing the base wasn’t nearly as big of an issue as gaining new voters among the undecideds. Right now, the Democrats are becoming their base, a bunch of operatives who care more about lip service than results. If Sarah Palin had been allowed to do in 2008 what she did in 2010, rally people, some of those Republican no-shows and undecideds who voted for Obama may have actually had a reason to believe in something other than change.

    • DeniseVB, on September 18, 2011 at 3:15 pm said:

      I keep thinking of LBJ, but he was being primaried and RFK was kicking his butt? Fuzzy memories, except that RFK was assassinated in June and Nixon won in ’68. The Jimmy-Teddy war in ’80 gave us Reagan. Probably what the Dems are thinking of.

  5. myiq2xu, on September 18, 2011 at 12:13 pm said:

    LVRJ:

    One Nevada Democratic Party insider offered this tip for candidates running for public office in 2012: “Don’t get your picture taken with President Obama,” he said.

  6. Three Wickets, on September 18, 2011 at 12:51 pm said:

    Rex Murphy: The media’s love affair with a disastrous president Wow, from the Canadians, whole rant below. Great photo too.

    As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United States — with a double-dip recession now all but certain — a reckoning is overdue. American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.

    Much of the Obama coverage was orchestrated sychophancy. They glided past his pretensions — when did a presidential candidate before “address the world” from the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin? They ignored his arrogance — “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” And they averted their eyes from his every gaffe — such as the admission that he didn’t speak “Austrian.”

    The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jermiah Wright. In the midst of the brief stormlet over the issue, one CNN host — inexplicably — decided that CNN was going to be a “Wright-free zone.” He could have hung out a sign: “No bad news about Obama here.”

    The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.

    Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

    Every doubt they hid from themselves about Obama, every potential embarrassment they tucked under the blanket of their superior sensibilities, they furiously over-compensated for by their remorseless hounding of Palin — from utterly trivial e-mails, to blogger Andrew Sullivan’s weird speculations about Palin’s womb, musings that put the Obama “Birther” fantasies into a realm near sanity. (We are now seeing an echo of that — with a new book promoting all sorts of unconfirmed gossip about Palin, including her alleged sexual dalliance with a basketball star.)

    As a result, the press gave the great American republic an untried, unknown and, it is becoming more and more frighteningly clear, incompetent figure as President. Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

    To the degree the press neglected its function as watchdog and turned cupbearer to a styrofoam demigod, it is a partner in the flaws and failures of what is turning out to be one of the most miserable performances in the modern history of the American presidency.

    • ralphb, on September 18, 2011 at 1:05 pm said:

      Ayup!

    • Dario, on September 18, 2011 at 2:20 pm said:

      After reading that article, it dawned on me that the major media outffits were also afraid to be painted raycist if they highlighted Obama’s errors and shortcomings

    • trist, on September 18, 2011 at 2:20 pm said:

      Nice!

    • votermom, on September 19, 2011 at 6:38 am said:

      Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

      They turned her into the anti-Obama.
      So now the more Obama falls apart, the more people are inclined to think “if they lied about how great he was, could they have lied about how bad she is?”

  7. trixta, on September 18, 2011 at 1:10 pm said:

    “styrofoam demigod” LOL! Best Michelle should prepare to tape some interviews about her Spamalot years at the WH for posterity.

  8. Bull J. Moose, on September 18, 2011 at 1:14 pm said:

    Honk, fucking, honk!

  9. catarina, on September 18, 2011 at 2:12 pm said:

    If Hillary resigns as SOS…John Kerry will take her place?

  10. Should Obama abandon his re-election bid? (The Week) | Breaking News Today, on September 19, 2011 at 9:23 am said:

    [...] might help Obama’s legacy: Think about it, says The Crawdad Hole. If Obama steps down, “history will likely be kind to him because he inherited a mess even [...]

  11. Should Obama abandon his re-election bid? (The Week) | Stock Market News - Business & Tech News, on September 19, 2011 at 10:11 am said:

    [...] might help Obama’s legacy: Think about it, says The Crawdad Hole. If Obama stepsRead More from the Article Source: [...]

  12. Should Obama abandon his re-election bid? – The Week « Ye Olde Soapbox, on September 19, 2011 at 10:39 am said:

    [...] might help Obama’s legacy: Think about it, says The Crawdad Hole. If Obama steps down, “history will likely be kind to him because he inherited a mess even [...]

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