Good News, Bad News Barack

On one hand, the economic numbers are looking up for Obama at the moment, and ECB head Mario Draghi is finally fulfilling his promise:  he appears to be taking the necessary actions to prevent the eurozone from collapsing and thereby becoming the biggest factor weighing on Obama's chances in 2012. On the other hand, even Iowans are coming to realize that Newt is presidentially challenged, unsuited in both temperament and character to be in the White House. So Obama is now more certain than ever to be facing Mitt Romney, who for all his many flaws is realistically the only one who can beat him. To make matters worse, Iraq may be going downhill fast--and Mitt has hit him hard over the failed troop extension talks.


So where does that leave the election odds? I think Obama's biggest trump card may end up being the divide within the GOP exposed by the new House-Senate rift over payroll tax cut extensions. John Boehner's jittery eleventh hour cave today, and the GOP's long weekend of humiliating internecine tension, is further evidence that the Republicans don't know who they really want to be. In the broadest philosophical sense, there is GOP consensus on pursuing the Bush tax cuts, changing the tax code and reducing entitlements. But as soon as you get into the details of many of these issues, confusion reigns, as seen in the apparent inability of Boehner and McConnell to communicate. There is a new confusion over trade policy, over voucherizing Medicare (the sharp dispute between Ryan and Gingrich), and which programs are to be cut. And we haven't even begun to talk about foreign policy, where the tensions between the old neocon camp (best manifested by Santorum, I think) and the traditionalists (like Huntsman) remain completely unresolved within the party: have you ever seen a more confused and less united response to any foreign policy than the various debate comments that have come out of the GOP candidates about Obama's Libya policy?


Obama's botched many opportunities already, as we have tirelessly pointed out, but he's very lucky in his adversaries. He still has a chance to look leaderly, and presidential anew, in 2012....