In an article in Politico, entitled “Can Obama Recapture ’08?” Julie Mason writes this:

Obama faces a reelection dynamic familiar to all modern incumbent presidents, said John Kenneth White, a political scientist at The Catholic University of America. “Newly elected presidents are Rorschach figures. We can project anything on to them about how the country will be,” White said. “Two, three, four years later, they are not Rorschach figures anymore, and there is that certain sense of disappointment.”

This is a rather odd assessment by a political scientist. Since 1968, four incumbent presidents have been reelected—Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. And each of them improved their margin of victory running as an incumbent. In fact, Nixon and Reagan won 49 states each in their reelection bid.

The truth is that incumbency brings with it all sorts of advantages in a presidential race. But what it also brings with it something else: a record of governing. For some, that’s a distinct advantage. For others—like Jimmy Carter and, I suspect, for Barack Obama—it will be quite a disadvantage. But trying to explain the difficulties Obama faces by some inevitably reelection dynamic is simply wrong.