In an interview on NBC's “Today” show two weeks after he was sworn in, President Obama was blunt.
He said if he didn't deliver, he'd be “a one- term proposition.” Put this in the category of what did he know and when did he know it.
The “it” is that he was under the white hot glare of the public to deliver the goods or be quickly dumped into the Presidential has- been bin.
Polls back up this hard political reality about Obama. A mid-August Washington Post-ABC News survey found that his approval ratings continue to plunge. Part of that can be chalked up to inevitability.
New Presidents always ride into office on the crest of both voter hopes and euphoria about the prospect of change and disgust at, and voter fatigue with the former seat warmer in the White House.
New presidents just as quickly see their approval ratings dip or freefall. It’s easy to see why. They try to do too much too soon, promise not to do political business in the old ways, try to make too drastic legislative changes, or quickly reverse the bad old policies of their predecessor.
It’s the fabled man on the white horse coming to the rescue. This is, of course, just that fable. Real politics and an impatient public knock that storybook notion for a loop.
LBJ’s Advantages
In Obama’s case, he gambled that his Presidency would be a crowning success if he could beat back the fine-tuned, well-oiled and well-endowed health care industry juggernaut and get health care reform that’s real health care reform through Congress and into law.
Only one President has been able to do that, Lyndon Johnson. He arm-twisted, browbeat and outsmarted Congress and the healthcare industry to get Medicare.
Johnson had won a landslide victory in 1964, had fine-tuned, hard osed political skills, had the reform spirit of the civil rights movement and a solid Democratic Party behind him. And he had the wellspring of public sympathy after JFK’s murder. Obama is not LBJ, politically. He has neither the times nor Johnson’s massive mandate for change going for him.
Above everything else, the voters put Obama in the White House to make the economy right, rein in the Wall Street greed merchants, save jobs and homes, and get the credit pipeline to businesses open.
That hasn’t happened.
Instead, they’ve gotten a raucous and contentious healthcare reform fight that’s given a badly fractured and reeling GOP, the butt of scorn and jokes, something it never dreamed in its wildest dreams in mid- November. That’s the weapon to get back in the political hunt.
If anyone had dared say a month ago that the percent of voters who blame Obama for making a mess of healthcare reform was in striking distance of the number of voters who blame the GOP for the mess, they’d have been measured for a straightjacket. A mid-August Pew Research survey found just that.
Obama eventually will get a healthcare bill to sign. It will be a bill that will satisfy few.
Progressives will scream even louder that the bill, sans a public option, and deal-laden with big Pharma giveaways, is smoke and mirrors, sham reform, another infuriating betrayal of his campaign pledge of hope and change.
The Good News: Ample Time
The Fox network, Limbaugh and the GOP attack hounds will scream even louder that the bill and Obama are taking the country down a sinkhole.
The bill will leave the majority of voters confused, perplexed, even more uneasy about what Obama is really up to, and his seeming inability to be the tough, decisive leader that millions took a chance on.
The conventional wisdom is that Obama has plenty of time to get things right.
Here’s the problem. Healthcare and the economy are signature markers for a successful Obama first term and the justification for a second one.
Doubts, unease, or his real or perceived failure will be hard to unhinge from voter thinking. Blacks, Hispanics, young and progressive voters still will back him.
But will they crusade for him as they did in 2008?
That means again turning out in big and impassioned numbers. This won’t happen if they feel Obama waffled or reneged on his key promises. Meanwhile, the GOP will sow more fear, pound away on the doubts, unease and perceived failures of Obama. It will dump its bizarre Palin fascinaton, will have a fat campaign chest, and will groom a fresh new GOP face, (just like the Dems did with Obama).
Worse, Obama won’t have the gargantuan trump card he had in 2008. That was the Bush bogeyman to scare, shock and rev up voters. This doesn’t spell defeat in 2012. It does spell an Obama nightmare about a one-term presidency.
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 also is a social and political analyst, and he appears on such television 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 Black News.com, Alternet.com , BlackAmericaWeb.Com and the Huffington Post.com. He does a weekly commentary on KJLH Radio in Los Angeles.His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report,” can be heard in Los Angeles on KTYM 1460 AM, and nationally on blogtalkradio.com
