Rushing to Obama's Aid

President Obama should be a ruptured duck in the water. The economy still stinks and maybe even sinks (which is worse is hard to say). Unemployment is high enough that no incumbent president has ever won reelection with such numbers except for FDR. He has infuriated liberals by not being tough enough on Republicans while being too war mongering abroad. He has infuriated conservatives by being, well, Obama. I think that's actually enough. He is after all still a plausible Democrat and some suspect him of also being an African American.

He gets no credit from liberals for passing healthcare reform that no other president ever did. But he gets all the blame from Republicans. By this time in this election cycle the wars are his, he owns the economy and no one is satisfied. Even leaders in the African American community such as Cornel West and Tavis Smiley have turned on him with a certain viciousness, barely covered with the "I say this with love to my brother" rhetoric.

Normal political analyses hold that if the Right and the Left are angry, you should be in good shape with the middle--those who actually decide elections. They reason that the Left will vote Democratic and the Right will vote Republican so the Independents and broad middle will decide the outcome. This usually good bet is not such a good bet this season. While Obama will get the votes of non-white ethnics and liberals--but without the same enthusiasm and hope--he is in free fall with independent whites.

Clearly Obama is a wounded duck, and he would be a dead duck except for his secret weapon: The Republicans! Hope is a feathered thing the poet wrote and every day Republicans feather Obama's wings. Only today (Aug 8) Eric Cantor insisted that every extra dollar that FEMA needs for our natural disasters, say from Hurricane Irene, needs to be balanced by a cut somewhere else in the budget. This from a party that carried both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars off the books and outside the budget for 7 years. No questions asked for bombing foreign countries but mandatory cuts to social services for helping Americans who are not figuratively underwater but actually under water. Never mind the lack of values or decency. The utter tone-deafness is astounding.

But that's not the end of toned-deafness--only the most recent example. Earlier this week, in a separate moral universe, Mitt Romney, who had told unemployed folks that he was also unemployed, set the standard for having a tin ear by applying for a permit to expand his beach house in La Jolla from 4,000 sq. ft. to 11,000. So much for the unemployed man of the people.

Yes, all that can rescue Obama's presidency is incarnate in the Republicans. Against an un-named generic Republican he gets trounced, but when people start filling in the names, Obama starts looking to be more fully fledged. Yes, I know many of my ilk would like him to fight back harder and act angrier. But we are wrong. No, it isn't the old chestnut that we don't want to see an angry black man. We don't want to elect an angry president. We elect these people to come into our homes--and sometimes hearts--for 4 or 8 years. We have almost always elected the person whom we like, who embodies optimism and hope.

While it is true that we elected the less than sunny Richard Nixon over the relentlessly ebullient Hubert Humphrey, that was because Humphrey was fatally wounded by having done his job as Vice President and supported his boss, LBJ, and the Vietnam War.

As Perry's snarky put-downs get more coverage, as Michele Bachmann's apocalyptics get more play (perhaps unfairly, but inevitably), as Romney's White Horse Prophecy beliefs come out, (perhaps again unfairly but also inevitably) the only optimist will be the battered but still flying Barack Obama. He won't win with the same vote margin, nor with the same dreamy enthusiasm. But with the invaluable help of this year's version of the Republican Party, this duck will fly--even if he no longer soars.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com