Can President Obama Succeed and the Democratic Party Struggle?

The political momentum at the moment seems to strongly favor a Republican comeback in the 2010 congressional elections. A series of election wins (including Scott Brown's shocking Senate victory in Massachusetts) and strong poll numbers for Republican candidates in many races suggest that the Democrats face an uphill battle to avoid losing seats. At the same time, however, the same polls tell us President Obama remains more popular than either party or Congress. Could a Democratic fall in 2010 not necessarily place the president in an uncomfortable position for 2012? I think that's quite possible.

It's easy to see why the public is disillusioned with the Democrats at the moment. Their major legislative victory was the stimulus package which, to believe the rhetoric from Washington, saved the nation from another Great Depression but failed to lower unemployment to acceptable levels. The other two major items on the year's agenda, health care and climate change, were stalled in the Senate and remain unresolved. The Democrats, including the president, must cling to the stimulus as an example of their success -- they have some numbers to back them up, but I think it's asking too much to expect the public to rejoice just because things aren't any worse when they still remain really bad. The stimulus also wasn't originally sold as primarily a damage control rather than a growth package, hence the infamous claim by two Obama's economic advisers that unemployment would not exceed 8% provided that the stimulus was passed. I think it's pretty obvious that Democrats would still call the stimulus package a success regardless of what actually is going on with the economy -- they don't have much choice right now politically. Cap and trade is perhaps not popular enough to have ever been a major winning issue (especially given all the global warming related controversy since Climategate), but health care reform is another story. However, the great health care debate of '09 took some weird turns. I thought health care was one of President Obama's winning issues as a presidential candidate, but his message in 2008 was different than what was heard in 2009. Unlike Obama, many other Democrats never even had qualms about the morality of forcing Americans to buy insurance and that idea -- rather than reigning in insurers whose practices and prices Candidate Obama blamed -- became one of the central aspects of the reform debate. While regulations on insurers certainly can affect the consumer/voter, they have the virtue of being indirect. Mandates on the consumer, however, are as direct a law as can be, and it was a massive oversight on the part of the Democrats to think that voters would accept a mandate lying down...it's a political law that it's easier to accept stuff that affects other people or institutions rather than yourself. The Dems probably thought people who already had health insurance of some kind (and they are the majority) wouldn't care about such a mandate, but even if you have something you don't necessarily want to be forced to have it...I've never driven a car without car insurance, but I nonetheless feel very warmly about New Hampshire just because they don't have a car insurance mandate. The hysteria whipped up by the GOP about a potential government takeover in health care didn't exactly make things easier for the Democrats, either.

To the extent that President Obama has been linked to the Democrats' legislative failures he has indeed been damaged and the fall in his popularity reflects that. However, it's nothing unusual for presidents to lose popularity after their first years...if anything, it is de rigueur. I think he has a strong chance to win in 2012 if he plays to his strengths. Obama fits the presidential role in many of the same ways that Clinton and Reagan did and the Bushes did not (I doubt GWB would've won a second term had 9/11 not been such a game-changing event, not to mention the controversy of whether he really won that first term or not). He remains an articulate and interesting speaker -- perhaps a little overexposed but nonetheless an excellent orator. He comes across as both charming and intelligent and is a good representative of America overseas...given that George W. Bush's verbal stumbling has become the stuff of legend on YouTube, it's hard not to notice an improvement in that respect. Foreign policy and military matters are much more the domain of the president than health care, and Obama has succeeded in living up to his pledge to draw back in Iraq and ramp up in Afghanistan while pursuing a more conciliatory diplomatic policy towards much of the rest of the world. Unlike Reagan, he doesn't have the burden of being expected to act tough while confronting a world power so he has had the freedom to play a cat and mouse game with both Russia and China, bending on some issues and standing firm on others. The problems he faces overseas are lingering ones that can stew for years to come: how to get out completely of Afghanistan and Iraq, how to ease Iran's nuclear ambitions, how to influence China to change its economic policies. If he has to face a foreign policy crisis of the like of 9/11, that will be a severe test, but it may very well never happen.

For all the talk of hope and change in 2008, President Obama's greatest advantage over his fellow Democrats may well be that he is a far better politician than most in either party. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and much of the rest of the Democratic caucus seem strangely plastic and awkward in comparison. The Democrats don't have a deep bench in Congress, and the Republicans seem to have recruited more exciting challengers than the Democrats have so far. Marco Rubio and Peter Schiff get my attention...Martha Coakley, not so much. Granted, such "interesting" challengers often lose to establishment candidates in primaries because of moderate voters (after all, the Republican caucus isn't all that interesting for the most part either!), but I don't think Democrats can afford to be boring in 2010. Obama, though, just needs to campaign like he did in 2008 and use his organization wisely to have a decided edge over most likely 2012 candidates. He also will have a couple more years to really define his presidency. Frankly, he may look even better in contrast to a uncooperative, opposition Congress -- gridlock is a highly underrated route to prosperity though political party members absolutely loathe it.