President Obama should turn a deaf ear to the silly chatter about not running again.
He has heard plenty of that in the weeks since the mid-term election drubbing. Much has not come from the usual hostile GOP and Tea Party suspects. They have flatly said their goal is to make Obama a failed, flawed President and Presidency.
The stand-down talk has come in a string of op-ed pieces, web and blog talk, speculation and guesswork from respected Democrat Party supporters and operatives. If Obama designates himself a lame duck President now, supposedly the GOP will call off the attack dogs, embrace cooperation and bipartisanship, and this will help promote national unity. This would, the theory goes, allow him to make real headway on attaining his foreign policy goals on the Afghanistan war, North Korean nukes, the Middle East, to shepherd through an economic recovery, and spare packs of Democratic incumbents from losing their jobs in another tidal wave against him in 2012.
None of this makes any sense.
The GOP declared civil war on Obama not last month or last year but the instant the final vote declared him the Presidential winner in 2008. The GOP did not launch its take-no-prisoners war solely to drive him from office. The war would have been waged against Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat who won the Presidency.
The only thing different about Obama from them is he is African-American. That opened the racial floodgate to hector, harass, pillory and demean him. The GOP war is about regaining power, control, political dominance, protecting its corporate and financial interests, its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws, and more broadly imposing its philosophical view of how government should be run.
The Presidency is the grand prize that pulls the political, economic and philosophical threads on how government and power will be exercised together for the GOP.
Then there is this question: If Obama can perform the political miracle that will bring political peace and unity, help the economy and improve foreign policy by not running, why couldn’t he do it as President? The Obama one-term proponents give no real answer to this.
The other blurred crystal ball gazing foisted off as political reason for Obama to pack it in is that America has plummeted into an era of scarcity, class-gaping divisions between rich and poor, plunging living standards, military decline, and faces major challenges to its economic dominance from China, India, Brazil, Japan and Western Europe. In this view, America is going the way of the Roman and British empires. This supposedly explains the anger and angst of the Tea Party at Obama. In short, he is the fall guy for America’s sink. This is bunkum, too.
The Truth Behind the Tea Party
The Tea Party’s relentless rage and hounding of Obama is not fueled by insecurity over where tomorrow’s paycheck is coming from, whether America will get clocked in Afghanistan, what Brazil will or won’t do in the financial markets or that the government cannot pay its bills because of massive hock to everyone.
It is fueled by race and shrewd media and political manipulation. America has been in the era of economic uncertainty, foreign competition and military shrinkage, for the past two decades. If America’s domestic and foreign slide alone were reasons to tell a President not to run, that President should have been W. Bush in 2004.
No loud cries, endless polls or legions of pundits clucked for him to step down. If he did, it would somehow reverse America’s slide, or at least let him off the hook for it. But that’s exactly what Obama is being told.
A little history is in order. He can’t win. He’s made a mess of the economy. His foreign policy initiatives have stalled. The inexperience that his opponents repeatedly warned would do him in once he got in the White House proved true.
Now Hear This
A Gallup poll backed up the rampant talk that the President should not run for re-election because of political failures and public disgust. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents said that. The President, a multitude said with absolute certainty, was irreparably damaged political goods. He shouldn’t run for reelection. If he did, he couldn’t win. That person was not named Obama.
It was Ronald Reagan. The year was 1982. The economy still was mired in double digit unemployment and inflation. His approval numbers were in the tank. We know the rest. Reagan didn’t listen to the pundits, the critics or heed the poll numbers. He won a smash re-election victory in 1984. Presidents from Truman to Clinton have heard the dreaded three words, “one-term President” said about them after popularity plunges, legislative reversals or midterm party losses.
Two years is an eternity in politics. A recovering economy, a hard, decisive breakthrough in the war on terrorism or GOP internal self-destruction, could turn the tide in the White House‘s favor. One more note. Obama’s popularity numbers are higher than Truman, Reagan or Clinton at the same juncture of their Presidencies. They won re-election. So can he.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally acclaimed author and political analyst. He has authored 10 books; his articles are published in newspapers and magazines nationally in the United States. Three of his books have been published in other languages. He is also a social and political analyst and he appears on such TV programs as CNN, MSBC, NPR, the O'Reilly Show, American Urban Radio Network, and local Los Angeles television and radio stations as well. He is an associate editor at New America Media and a regular contributor to BlackNews.com, Alternet.com, BlackAmericaWeb.Com and the HuffingtonPost.com. He does a weekly commentary on KJLH-FM radio (102.3).
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