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Could Barack Obama Win a Third Term?
Apparently he thinks so. At an African Union summit in Addis Ababa earlier this week, President Obama declared:
“I actually think I’m a pretty good president,” he said. “I think if I ran, I could win. But I can’t. So there’s a lot that I’d like to do to keep America moving, but the law is the law.”
It’s understood that those who seek the Presidency must have a certain degree of amour-propre. Yet it’s hard to recall another President who so obviously regards himself as a major historical figure. It’s even harder to think of another President who so little deserves that distinction. A record which contains such highlights as a stagnant economy, crippling deficits, and the recent Iranian deal suggests a clock-puncher who leans to the left.
Yet the comment about winning a third term isn’t quite as absurd as it sounds. The President’s approval ratings currently sit at 46%, about five points short of his popular vote percentage in 2012. They have never dipped below 38% and rarely fallen into the low forties. This is the strange paradox of the Obama Administration: A mediocre president who, if the 22nd Amendment was repealed, might very well win a third term.
Comparing Obama to other Presidents at this point in their terms he ranks below Reagan, Eisenhower, Clinton and Johnson but ahead of Truman and George W Bush. The latter two had their ratings dragged down by war. Reagan, Clinton and Eisenhower were buoyed by a surging economy. For a presidency in what might be described as quasi-peacetime, Obama’s approval ratings are below par. Yet, despite his failures and shortcomings, the 44th President is not hated in the same way as Harry Truman and the younger Bush.
What distinguishes Obama from the genuinely unpopular presidents is the lack of a lighting rod issue. A flagging or failing war can destroy even the most skillful of political operators. Witness the decline and fall of Lyndon Johnson. In a little more than three years, LBJ went from a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater to a comparatively narrow victory over Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire. Both Truman and Bush saw less precipitous, though ultimately decisive drops.
Running through the demerits of the Obama legacy, there is just enough mitigation for him to get a pass from much of the electorate. The runaway deficits are usually pegged on Congress. The unemployment rate has been so fiddled with as to be nearly meaningless. This allows President Obama to proclaim an improvement in the economy, though an improvement from which few working or lower middle-class Americans have benefited. Even in what is regarded as a traditional purview of the presidency, the management of foreign affairs, there is enough voter apathy for the Iranian deal to go through with a shrug.
Barack Obama reminds me of nothing so much as that charming slacker at work. He does his job well enough, never seems to be completely blamed or credited with anything, and yet glides from promotion to promotion. Certainly he has his detractors. The ambitious workaholics who know who really writes his reports, the underlings who struggle to clean up his messes, and his enemies who know where the bodies are buried but have been bought off. Should any speak up, they’ll be met with his grinning face and a well studied style of self-deprecation. Who could hate a nice guy like that?
This is what we have in store for the next year and a half. The problems mount, the crises are ignored and President Obama drifts glibly into the future.
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Oh that infamous Barack Obama ego and narcissim. No he couldn’t win again, and frankly he should have lost in 2012. Pretty good president? Ha, he’s the worst of my lifetime and maybe the worst ever.
I did include the “at a minimum” part. :)
And I’m not quibbling with that part — it’s unquestionably true.
It would also disrupt the series of events that make Hillary the Democratic frontrunner today.
The level of disruptions would be amazing really. Would Clinton have even governed the same way in his second term if he thought he could get a third? Would Al Gore have even accepted the Vice Presidential spot on a ticket where he might not get a shot of the White House for decades?
Had Reagan run for a third term in 1988 and lost, Clinton would not have run in 1992.
Had Reagan won in 1988, more prominent Dems. would have entered the 1992 primary to run against a non-incumbent Bush and Clinton might not have gotten the nomination. Even if he did, we would not have had a Perot to split the Republican vote and the dynamic would have been totally different.
What does it say about the Republican Party that they could not beat the “worst President in American history”, or even really come close to it?
One of the problems conservatives have is that they cannot understand why people do not automatically see things as they see them.
Short sighted? They’ve added millions of illegal voters to the rolls, and are about to– administratively – go after the suburbs and single family housing. They’ll do this by establishing “facts on the ground” that will require evictions of poor people to reverse. And remember “47%” it’s worse now.
They’ve also heavily politicized the Civil Service and the judiciary and expanded the administrative state. That’s going to be hard for any future president to undo.
Oh I agree with you. We are not a majority in this country. And I can’t understand the hot heads that support a polarizing candidate. How is he supposed to win?
They want a dictator, and he’s still the best the Democrats have. Yeah they have their problems with Obama, but nobody is perfect. That 46% approval rating is basically every Democrat. My impression is that if you went around asking every Democrat you found if they would like Obama to be dictator for life, most would say yes.
Also, the power-worship nature of the Left means that the movement and the man are the same. The personal is the political, and all that. If a politician is flawed, then his ideas are equally flawed; likewise, if a politician’s ideas are good, then the politician is good.
No, that’s nuts. Those people exist but you’re mixing all Dems in with Daily Kos. DK is only one slice of their pie.
True, they have been working on demographic changes, but my point was that all of their plans revolved around the Executive taking actions and Congress not interfering, as the items you mentioned show.
Congress has done nothing on immigration, and all a Republican president has to do to start reversing Obama’s policies is to enforce the immigration laws which Obama has ignored.
Similarly, if a Republican president has the DOJ not continue the legal battles against the suburbs, then those go away instantly.
I grant the the Democratic dominion of the bureaucracies is a major problem, which has confounded recent Republican presidents, but having a Republican president instead of a Democratic president has been shown to dramatically reduce how much effort bureaucrats will put in. And since there appear to be high ranking permanent officials in ICE and DHS who want the immigration laws enforced, a Republican president could allow for massive changes in how the laws are enforced.
Then why do Democrats overwhelming support Obama’s abuses of power? How many journalists on the Left have spoken out against these abuses? There have been multiple opportunities, but they never do. Is the average Democrat who relies on the New York Times, or the Boston Globe going to object to something that the newspapers say is OK?
People hardly follow politics. They basically just support their team. And when their guy deflates the football they defend him against attack.
Not many slices to that pie of theirs. How many Dems are running for office? 2-3? A socialist, a crook and nobody has heard of the rest. They would reelect Obama in a heartbeat and shutdown the elections even quicker when they thought they can get away with it. They will do so for the kids and the future.
Exactly my point. Furthermore, if there is any constitutionally imposed limit on the pursuit of political power that the Democratic party still believes in, I am unaware of it. They’ve already come out against every freedom in the Bill of Rights. I find it hard to believe they will stop there, and where the party leaders go the rest of the party will follow.
Well, perhaps not all original 10 amendments, but certainly amendments I, II, IV, and V, and they don’t seem to have much value for VI, IX or X.
To pull it back a bit here, it’s very, very unlikely that the Democrats will try to seize absolute power in 2016 – that won’t be for a few more decades. But the stakes in this election are huge.
If Hillary becomes president, she can cement Obama’s policies, and continue enacting the Left’s agenda. However, if a Republican becomes president, they can undo almost the entirety Obama’s policies: Iran deal is gone, the ad hoc policies which maintain Obamacare are repealed, the immigration executive actions are removed, oil/natural gas drilling is allowed to expand, the anti-suburb lawsuits are abandoned, all foreign policies are completely changed, and that’s just what can happen in the first month (along with a whole host of other things I’m forgetting).
2016 will likely be the most heated presidential election in living memory, and 2017 might be the most heated post-election period in US history.
Well if it is not Obama not leaving office then it will be Hillary elected. Those are the only options that will be allowed. Everything else is a side show to distract the masses.