WHEN THE CHIEF’S THE ISSUE!

By Edwin Cooney

In the 222 plus years of America’s age under our federal system, forty-three men have served as President of the United States. Only 10 of the thirty-three presidents who have sought re-election have been ultimately rejected by the voting public.

That would tend to indicate that President Barack Obama has a better than even chance of re-election so long as he can avoid a major foreign or domestic crisis. Such crises could include an economic downturn ala George H. W. Bush (1992), Americans being held hostage along with “stagflation" and unemployment (Jimmy Carter, 1980), a resented presidential pardon (Gerald Ford, 1976), a major depression (Herbert Clark Hoover, 1932), and a major party split brought on by an ambitious predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt (William Howard Taft, 1912) to name only the twentieth century incumbent presidential losers.

As 2012 approaches, President Obama, even more than the issues themselves, is likely to be the main issue of the upcoming campaign. Thus there comes into question the president’s release of his full Hawaiian birth certificate last week. Why did he release this information now rather than sooner; why didn’t he wait until later, for that matter? Could it be that he increasingly sees himself, as suggested above, the main issue in 2012? He may wish to clear away the unnecessary rubble enabling him to otherwise set the agenda for the next election.

Therein, as I see it, may well lay the president’s 2012 fate. Above, I listed the circumstances that caused Bush, Carter, Ford, Hoover, and Taft to lose their re-election bids.

Of course, every president who seeks re-election puts his reputation on the line. In times of relative domestic calm, incumbent presidents go onto the political hustings with an advantage. However, these are times of uncertainty and, even more, in millions of minds, Barack Obama’s very qualifications to be president remain in doubt. Additionally, because of his father’s African birth and anti-imperialist and pro socialistic political views, President Obama’s genuine patriotism remains a political issue -- despite his solemn vow to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” After all, what’s in it for us if we allow ourselves to trust a man when he takes a solemn oath?

On a daily basis, blogs appear on the internet suggesting that there is “an alien stranger among us.” The president’s attempt to calm anti-American sentiment in the Middle East by acknowledging the perils of their political and cultural struggles has met with considerable skepticism and contempt here at home. His efforts to compromise with conservatives on domestic legislation have been met with almost personal rejection by conservatives and have caused suspicious resentment among much of the president’s original liberal constituency.

Whenever a president becomes the issue, he can lose his political advantage as the incumbent. This was the danger George W. Bush faced in 2004.

Although Bush claimed victory in Iraq in May 2003 on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier by personally landing his plane to demonstrate who was in charge, Iraq was actually becoming a hornet’s nest instead of a self-sustaining democracy which was expected to pay its way to freedom with its oil reserve. In 2004, Democrats tried desperately to make GWB the issue and the only issue. The tide only began to turn for President Bush when the Vietnam War record of the Democratic candidate John Kerry was made a “national security issue” by powerful media conservatives.

In 1996, Republicans were all set to make Bill Clinton’s political, domestic and sexual issues the major focus of the campaign when they themselves became the big issue by attempting to shut down the federal government in December 1995. Hence, the youthful president outshone the venerable Bob Dole, turning his purposeful campaign into a mere tryout television rehearsal for the successful Viagra commercial that eventually must have put plenty of money in his pocket.

In 1980, although he’d negotiated a Middle East Peace Treaty, the Panama Canal Treaty (controversial in itself), and deregulated the airlines, trucking and telephone industries to set the scene for healthy competition in the future, Jimmy Carter’s competence was the issue. The world was restless and Carter didn’t appear to have a handle on it. The GOP’s antidote was the more attractive and eloquent Ronald Wilson Reagan.

The challenge facing President Obama at times must seem very daunting. Nevertheless, the more we dispassionately examine any president’s agenda, the more we see that facing daunting choices is a presidential norm.

With all of the issues ahead to trip up President Obama, there may well be a silver thread. His opponents have to pick a candidate (in fact, two candidates) who may well pinch-hit for the “chief” as the main political issue “in that rowdy transition of tumult and circus—the presidential campaign!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY