Tell me if this sounds familiar: A vulnerable sitting President reviled by the other side of the aisle running for reelection against a flip-flopping, empty suit challenger who won nomination because his party was too directionless to choose a stronger leader.
What we have shaping up here, in a Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney 2012 election, is Bush-Kerry 2004 all over again. And we should expect the same result: a narrow, uninspired victory for the incumbent – unless the unthinkable happens (economic recovery), and we see a repeat of 1984 when Reagan creamed Mondale.
What the Republicans have going for them in this election is mostly piss and vinegar. The right hates Obama. They’re really fired up about ousting him – but what they don’t have is a plan. Apparently, the right learned nothing from watching the left flounder eight years ago, when the Democrats were unable to articulate an engaging platform beyond We don’t like Bush. Like the left eight years ago, the Republicans on their way to nominating a weak personality with a political history that is spotted with too many changes of heart. That the right can’t produce a leader any better than a default Mitt Romney – the man they roundly rejected four years ago – is a sign of how bad the Republican fallout remains from the Bush years.
Team Bush perverted the ideals of conservatism –spending recklessly, mismanaging the military – and the Republican Party now finds itself without any bedrock of success to fall back onto, as the Reagan years fade into history and out of memory. What we’re left with in Romney is a candidate so colorless that even if the economy continues to slump through 2012, Obama will weather the opposition and keep his job.
But speaking of Ronald Reagan, we tend to forget that the American economy was a disaster for most of his first term. When the country came out of the recession prior to the 1984 election, Reagan was able to blame the problems on Jimmy Carter and take credit for the turnaround. Walter Mondale – Carter’s Vice President – won the Democratic nomination over a field so weak that his top rival was done in with a rather lame debate quip: Where’s the beef?, and was then slaughtered by Reagan in the general election.
We won’t any time soon see a Presidential candidate carry 49 of 50 states like Reagan did in ‘84 – we’re too Red & Blue for that now – but if the 2012 economy picks up, the anti-Obama message of the right won’t gain a foothold, and Barack gets to claim economic victory while indicting Republican policies. He’d win in a landslide.
But what is more likely is that the economy stays flat, Obama has to sweat it out and Mitt Romney gets a chance to prove just how uninspiring a candidate he really is. 2012 could be an ugly year in American politics.
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Follow Bison Messink on Twitter: @BisonMessink
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