Maybe it’s just the politics of the times — policy gridlock, do-nothing legislatures, perpetual campaigns. But it’s nonetheless distressing to see the president of the United States focused on his re-election effort in a way that makes it seem, at least, that he cares about nothing else.
For one thing, it’s springtime 2011. Voters don’t go to the polls for the next presidential election until Nov. 6, 2012. Nobody delivers a better stump speech than Barack Obama, but if we have to listen to Obama’s campaign rhetoric day in and day out for more than 18 months … well, we might have to stop paying attention.
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It’s understandable — almost — that Republicans are out on the campaign trail already, testing the waters for possible presidential bids.
For the most part, the GOP contenders (and pretenders) are unknown, untested and, some might say, uninspiring. These would-be presidents need to start early to break through the fog and convince the Republican primary electorate that they deserve to be viewed as potential commanders in chief.
President Obama, on the other hand, faces no primary challenge — none that’s evident at this stage of the game, anyway.
His nomination for a second term is virtually assured, so what he’s doing now is conducting a general election campaign against a Republican opponent (and maybe an independent or third party candidate) whose identity won’t be known until well into next year.
Doesn’t he have more pressing responsibilities at the moment?
And that’s the real point. The president has a right to seek re-election when and how he sees fit, of course.
But by announcing so many months before the election that he’s running, and then taking to the hustings so often and with such partisan intensity, Obama reminds us of something that became painfully obvious soon after he took office in 2009: He’s very good at running for president, not so good at being president.
It’s as if he believes he can take the electorate’s collective mind off our problems — and the sad reality that he’s doing little or nothing to solve them — by rattling off clever campaign speeches and lobbing verbal hand grenades at those who disagree with him.
Maybe he can. He charmed — conned? — the voters into handing him the keys to the White House once; who’s to say he can’t do it twice?
But perceptive voters — even some who voted for him last time — surely must be wondering why the president isn’t paying more attention to the job and less to the job application.
The country faces a looming debt crisis and budgetary operating deficits as far as the eye can see. The United States has yet to devise an effective plan for dealing with unrest in the Middle East.
Gasoline prices are soaring. Unemployment remains outrageously high with no relief in sight. The federal government, in short, is politically intractable and the president apparently has decided to do nothing more than add to the intractability.
For a while, it looked as though Obama might be ready to show some leadership, might be willing to work with his opponents in a serious effort to put people before politics, as the governor of Maine likes to say.
His last-minute budget deal with Republicans that avoided a government shutdown was especially encouraging — but the ink was barely dry on that agreement before the president shifted gears to full-force campaign mode, trashing Republicans as enemies of the people who want to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor and the elderly.
It’s a disgraceful performance, and we can’t help but wonder if it might ultimately be self-defeating.
We’re not betting the farm, you understand, but isn’t it possible that the voters will reject a president who did nothing for four years but ask for their votes?
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