In yesterday's Washington Post, Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell - pollsters who have worked for earlier Democratic presidents - offer some advice to today's incumbent that strikes me (in my relative ignorance about US politics) as being a candidate for the category of Big Political As-Ifs of Our Time. Under the heading 'one and done', they write:
Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.
To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.
If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
I'll stick my neck out and say Obama won't be doing this; he'll be running for a second term. But whether I'm right or not, I think one of the reasons Schoen and Caddell give in favour of their view is a bunch of hooey. They say it's clear that...
... the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party.
No, they weren't a referendum on the Obama presidency - not effectively, not really, not in any way (though they said something important, to be sure, about the state of US opinion). They were, precisely, midterm elections, and these are not an accurate guide to the presidential elections that follow. For Obama to assume the outcome in November 2012 were he to run for a second term would be a bit like conceding the result of a major cup tie, on the basis of having lost an earlier game to your upcoming opponents. As the woman said: the test is yet to come and it ain't done till it's over