Not as easy as some might think – from NRO’s The Corner:
Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, a Republican, tells Stephen Moore, “We need to understand that only once since 1896 has a party that took the White House not held on for at least two terms, and that was when Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. So the odds are stacked against us.” Fair enough. But the last time we had three back-to-back eight-year presidencies was 1801-1825. (If you’re strict in your definitions, we hadn’t even had two back-to-back eight-year presidencies since then—until the one we’re ending now.)
So, it is hard to get an incumbent President out of the White House – as Democrats learned in 1956, 1972, 1984 and 2004 and as Republicans learned in 1964 and 1996. But there is 1992, 1980 and 1932…all you need is either a split vote in the party in power (as in 1992), or for the party in power to preside over national collapse (as in 1932 and 1980).
To face facts: if, as we hope, Obama turns out to be a good President who executes policies which work to the advantage of the United States and thus things get better by 2012, then we don’t have much chance of beating him. Its not impossible, but its very, very hard. On the other hand if, as we fear, Obama turns out to be a miserable President who saddles us with policies which wreck the nation, then we don’t have much chance of losing to him.
We can, of course, all sign up at Daily Kos as kook leftists and start harping on Obama’s failure to turn the United States immediately into the United Socialist States of America and how, ya know?, Obama still hasn’t brought Bush up on war crimes charges….and hope that the kook left splits off from Obama…all we need is a kook left billionaire to play the role of Perot…Soros is out as he’s not a native born American; do we have anyone else to fit the bill?
Time will tell.
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