Brace yourself for ‘Obama might not run in ‘12’ stories
Politico suggests Obama might pack it in after a tough midterm election. Where have we heard this before?
Politico’s Roger Simon has a new column that serves as a useful preview of the inane commentary we will likely be flooded with after November’s election.
The basic idea: A “big-time Democrat” who has “hardly ever been wrong” tells Simon that the 2010 election is a lost cause for Barack Obama and the Democrats and that it’s time for the president to start worrying about how to save himself and his party in 2012. “But the biggest fear of some of those close to him,” this unnamed Democrat adds, “is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”
Pardon my skepticism here, but maybe I’d take Simon’s piece a little more serious if it wasn’t so easy to see coming. But it is the result of the panicky thinking that has long accompanied weak presidential approval ratings and rough midterm elections.
We saw the exact same thing with each of the last two presidents to face Obama-like poll numbers in their midterm years. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton tried desperately to contain the damage in midterm elections, both found they were powerless to do so, and both faced intense post-election speculation about whether they’d even bother to run for reelection two years later (and, if they went ahead and did so, whether they’d face a primary challenge).