The audacity of nope? Economic woes threaten to sink Obama

A PHRASE has entered the political bloodstream which you are going to be hearing a lot of in the next little while: “one-term presidency”.

No, I’m not referring to Michael D. Should he make it on the 27th — and far worse things could happen — and go on to serve two terms, he would still be a good six years younger than Dev was when he left the Park. Nor am I referring to Nicolas Sarkozy who, almost despite his best efforts to rile the French, still cannot be counted out in the face of such meagre Socialist opposition.

No, I refer of course, to “The One”, as Oprah Winfrey termed Barack Hussein Obama II. Suddenly, the US Republicans envision a scenario in which their presidential candidate could defeat Mr Obama in a referendum on his job performance. How can it be, you might ask, that the victor in an epoch-making election that feels like it took place so recently has fallen so low?

It was Obama himself who used the phrase, telling ABC last year that he would rather be a “really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president”. At this stage, just over a year before the next election, he looks like being neither.

In hindsight, the change Obama promised was accomplished that night in Chicago in November 2008. There was nothing he could do as president that was more important than being elected in the first place.

As he put it himself in that mesmerising speech: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer… It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day… Change has come to America.”

America’s longest lasting and most embarrassing barrier has been broken down, transcended. But Obama was the change; he wasn’t a catalyst for change. He has had some successes, for sure — many believe he saved the American car industry and the killing of Osama bin Laden was not an unimportant step — but where are the heroic but unpopular stands that will be vindicated by history?

And that’s the rub. Obama never set out to achieve anything for America that could compare with what he wanted to achieve for himself except to personify a change that had already occurred in American society. He couldn’t decide whether he was for gay marriage or against it. He wanted to roll back welfare reform then changed his mind. He promised to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions but spent a year backing away from it and hasn’t done so in office. He said he would end all the partisan wrangling that was debilitating America but actively engages in the same.

And things are indeed very bad for him. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen to a new low, with only 36% of Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job overall, according to an Economist/YouGov poll at the end of last month. Most Americans — 56% — disapprove of his performance. A 20-point gap just 13 months away from an election is not where an incumbent running for a second term should be or would want to be.

Mid-term blues, perhaps? Surely presidents have been here before and come back to win? Well, yes and no. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had difficult first terms but fought back to win. The difference is that Obama’s unpopularity comes much later in the electoral cycle. By the summers of 1983 and 1995 respectively – the third year of the Reagan and Clinton presidencies — the American economy was on the way back up, as were their approval ratings. By contrast, in 2011, no one is quite sure yet whether the economy and Obama’s ratings have hit rock bottom yet. Unlike Obama, Reagan and Clinton were again back in positive territory with more people approving than disapproving at this stage in their re-election bids.

Unfortunately for him, Obama’s presidency is beginning to look more like Jimmy Carter’s. He too came to office with seemingly great promise only to see it quickly fizzle away.

Carter who, as everyone who ever played Trivial Pursuits knows, was once a peanut farmer, had been a one-term governor of Georgia who snatched the Democratic Party nomination from under the noses of far more experienced rivals and went on to win against a sitting president, albeit one — Gerald Ford — who had not been elected. Like Obama, he had no record to speak of.

There are other similarities. Carter had his own equivalent of ‘Yes we can’: he promised “a government as good as the American people”. He too promised to be a unifier, bringing together north and south, black and white, conservatives and liberals. And it was Carter who pioneered the use of an autobiography as a substitute for previous achievements. It wasn’t the Iran hostage crisis or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that sealed Carter’s fate in 1980: it was the economy. Republicans hope to unseat Obama next year with a platform along the lines of: he inherited a bad economy and made it worse, squandered hundreds of billions on a stimulus program that failed to create any jobs, and blew a massive hole in the deficit that shattered the private sector’s confidence.

IF Americans believe the economy is improving, they will reject Republican claims about Obama’s “failed” economic stewardship. But if they perceive it is stationary or continuing to weaken, Obama might really find himself on the way out of the White House at the grand old age of 51.

And that’s why the grim economic news is so important. The American economy did look earlier in the year as if it might be bouncing back. Not any more. It was a mirage. Unemployment is rising once again. And with the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives again, a second stimulus package is out of the question.

So, while Reagan was able to fight and win the 1984 election under the “Morning in America” slogan because it resonated powerfully as the unemployment figures came tumbling down, Obama has no such option.

The upshot is that, so long as the Republicans don’t choose someone swivel-eyed — Michele Bachmann, for instance — the 2012 election is theirs to lose. In fact, both Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, and Mitt Romney, the one-time CEO of Bain & Company, look as though they might have the economic magic touch compared to Obama. The incumbent just never saw coming the double-dip recession which threatens to sink his presidency. Hope, no matter how audacious, will not be enough to win him a second term.

The combination of a stagnant (or declining) economy and a Republican-dominated Congress that considerably limits Obama’s capacity to take significant action could be the makings of which a one-term presidency are made.