Jonah Goldberg‘s latest column for National Review Online sets out some of the challenges President Obama faces as he pursues re-election in 2012.
A major strain of conventional wisdom in Washington these days is that Obama can win reelection by “tacking to the center.” Bill Clinton, who famously “triangulated” his way into a second term, is the model. Theoretically, Obama can do the same thing by leveraging a “centrist” debt-limit deal against his base, winning back the independents and moderates who delivered his decisive victory in 2008.
The problem, as many have pointed out, is that Obama can’t borrow the Clinton or Reagan playbooks because the economy is just too rotten. A rising economic tide gives presidents room to reinvent themselves. By the spring of 1995, the U.S. economy was averaging 200,000 new jobs per month.
But the bad economy isn’t the only hurdle. Clinton’s race to the center was a return to form. He beat George H. W. Bush by running as a centrist southern Democrat who supported the death penalty, wanted to “end welfare as we know it,” and was eager to zing his own base if it would earn him a second look from Reagan Democrats and others disillusioned with the party of McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis. His was a restoration, not a transformation. …
… He can’t revive his claim to be a post-partisan bridge-builder, can he? His first two years were as partisan as any we’ve seen in a generation. He certainly can’t run on “Yes We Can!” optimism, especially now that he’s shown his willingness to force a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich,” in the words of Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D., Mo.), down the throats of his base. He cannot run as a gung-ho fiscal hawk, not when he contributed so much to the deficit. And he will never outbid the GOP nominee on shrinking government. If he tries, his base will stay home.
