Obama’s dilemma

LITTLE ROCK — That two years is forever in politics is reflected in how things have changed in the past year alone.

Last spring I taught a seminar in which one of the featured books was by The New York Times’ Sam Tanenhaus. The title of the book was “The Death of Conservatism,” its thesis that the GOP was finished as long as it clung to archaic conservative principles like limited government and lower taxes.

So much for that.

The abruptly dismal fate of Tanenhaus’ book suggests that any speculation about the presidential race of 2012 must come with prudent disclaimers. But given our increasingly elongated presidential campaigns, would-be candidates don’t have the option of waiting for clarity before making decisions and plotting strategy.

It is not difficult to see the dilemma that President Obama is facing regarding his prospects for re-election. It’s the dilemma that faces every unpopular president hoping for a second term: the likelihood of an intra-party challenge for renomination.

Such challenges invariably fail, even when the challengers have names like Roosevelt, Reagan and Kennedy, but they also almost always spell defeat for November. In Obama’s case, this dilemma is especially acute because the challenge could come from either left or right.

If he stays to the left, a challenge from the right, which in Democratic Party ideological parlance means somewhat left of center, could materialize in the form of Hillary Clinton, most likely after shedding her secretary of state duties after a contrived diplomatic disagreement.

As improbable as that might sound, one should never forget that she won more votes and bigger states in the 2008 primary season than did Obama. It is also safe to assume that her desire to occupy the office once occupied by her husband is undiminished. We are already seeing polls showing her more popular than her boss.

If Obama moves to the center, as so many outside the Democratic ideological fever swamps suggest, an even more certain challenge is likely to come from the left, perhaps in the form of a soon-to-be unemployed Russ Feingold or Howard Dean.

The leftward challenge seems the more likely because of the ideological polarization that has occurred within America’s political parties over the past 20 or so years. Each successive election has pushed the Democrats farther to the left and the Republicans farther to the right, with fewer so-called moderates to be found on either side of the aisle.

The implications of polarization are troublesome for Obama because it means that a radical left Democratic base is likely to view any cooperation with Republicans on his part as apostasy. A diehard liberal challenger to Obama will thus find plenty of angryDemocrats willing to follow along on a disastrous ideological crusade. The nut jobs at MoveOn.org and Daily Kos are much more interested in ideological purity than in winning elections and tend to live in such ideologically insular worlds that they mistake their boutique radicalism for a populist mass movement.

Bill Clinton could move to the center after 1994 because Newt Gingrich and the Republicans overplayed their hand (to the point of Gingrich believing the country could be governed from Capitol Hill) because Clinton possessed an unusual combination of political skill and ideological flexibility, and because his party was, at least at that point, still beneficially populated by centrist New Democrats who let him move in that direction for the sake of electoral success.

None of those conditions is likely to apply in 2012. Nor is the economy, whatever recovery occurs between now and then, going to be doing anywhere near as well as it was in 1996.

Of course, Obama’s dilemma could be made less difficult by the GOP tendency toward blundering. Were Republican primary voters to make the mistake of nominating a charismatic but unelectable Sarah Palin instead of a more viable conservative like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, all bets would be off and Obama would begin to prepare a second inaugural address.

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Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.