… he will do so because of what happened in Washington yesterday. The tax-cut deal passed. The $1 trillion omnibus spending bill died in the Senate because of united Republican opposition. The administration announced its strategy in Afghanistan was, with many caveats and warnings, working. If the economy grows consistently going forward; if Republicans hold the line on spending for Obama; and if the fight against the Taliban and to stabilize Afghanistan continues apace, Barack Obama may indeed win in 2012 because the second half of his first term will prove to be the third term of George W. Bush.
The great difference for the rest of this term is and will be, of course, cultural. Yesterday morning, President Obama also gave a speech to the Tribal Nations Conference in which he promised to support a ludicrous UN “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” which the U.S. voted to oppose in 2007. So there’s that. And the kinds of judges he puts on the federal courts. And an Obama second term would revert its focus to the focus of the first half of the first term — to the implementation of the health-care bill. So this would be no Bill Clinton do-over.