The infectious, rresistible parlor game of the moment is the 2012 election. What about Palin? Can Obama survive the economy (a different question from whether the economy can survive Obama)? What about Palin? Will Obama’s accession to Republicans on tax cuts end the enthusiasm for his re-election on the left that he needs to ensure Democratic voter turnout?

Not to mention, What about Palin?

Given that a week is a lifetime in politics, that no one will be voting for another year, and that there’s no way of knowing what the immediate landscape will be like when voters begin to make decisions, why does this talk of 2012 fascinate us so? We love this game because it has a definable timeline. One way or another, sometime after midnight on November 7 of that year, there will be a winner and a loser.

But what if none of it matters? What if the results of the 2012 election are already sealed in the Book of Political Life—which, like the Book of Life that Jews are strongly advised to consider during the High Holy Days, decrees “who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low”?

I think a case can be made that the results of the election are already determined. Barack Obama, like George W. Bush before him, is a president of great consequence whose first two years in office were characterized by a frenzy of activity. The negative verdict delivered by the electorate in November 2010 was in large measure the result of his success in working his will and getting his way. And we ain’t seen nothing yet. The implementation of the most important accomplishment of his presidency—his health-care bill—will lie ahead, after the 2012 election.

It seems unlikely that Obama will get anything remotely comparable in importance done before the next election. And so the forces Obama has set in motion by the policies that have already expanded the size and scale and reach of the federal government will continue to govern the events of the next two years.

Meaning: an economic resurgence of unexpected size will strike many independent voters as a justification for the policies they rejected in November 2010. And also meaning: A continuance of the present economic difficulties will only deepen their sense of alienation. The same will likely be true of his approach in Afghanistan and Iraq, where unassailable and undeniable triumph on the battlefield and in the corridors of power doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

The 2012 election will be a referendum on the Obama presidency to a degree that will leave the 2010 election in the dust. In this sense, it matters far less who the Republican nominee will be than the fact of Obama’s presence on the ballot, and that includes Sarah Palin. If Obama runs under disastrous economic and foreign-policy conditions, he can and will lose to just about anyone. How Obama handles the day-to-day stuff, and how the Republicans react to him, between now and then really may not figure in at all except to the extent such action confirms already-existing ideas about him and them.

The exception might be a colossal event that would instantly alter the dynamic of the election. I don’t mean a natural disaster during which he could show “leadership skills,” or a horrific but geopolitically insignificant act of evil like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that gave Bill Clinton some political room. I mean an event for which human agency is directly responsible and therefore will necessitate a response of a new kind—a response that will reveal something we don’t yet know about Obama. It could be something monstrous, like 9/11; it could be something wondrous, like the discovery of a new fuel source. Obama’s response to such a challenge or such an opportunity might be the sole act of righteousness that, in the words of the great High Holy Day prayer, “averts the severe decree.”