How Sarah Palin Could Save Obama's Presidency

A miraculous economic recovery or a disastrous Republican campaign are just about the only things that can rescue Obama from an inauspicious one-term presidency.

Obama’s biggest problem could turn out to be that his presidential campaign was too successful for his own good, writes the Vancouver Sun’s William Watson. His “amazing success in 2008 presented him with an irresistible but very dangerous temptation to abandon his bedrock campaign promise,” which was to unite a country that had been torn apart by partisan bickering under George W. Bush. Obama trounced an inept John McCain in an historic election that produced the country’s first black president, and Watson argues that it went to his head. Instead of reaching out to Republicans, practically his first order of business was to pass health care reform that divided Congress as few policies ever have. Watson correctly points out that getting himself out of this mess will prove extremely difficult for Obama, because the optics of blaming the Republicans for being uncompromising won’t fly. “(I)f you make cooperation your reason for running and you don't produce cooperation, blaming the other guy will just sound lame.” Logic strikes again.

“(I)t’s clear the Democrats have two big problems,” writes Clifford Orwin in the Globe and Mail. “One is Barack Obama. The other is his program.” Orwin blames the “bloodbath” Democrats suffered at the midterms on Obama’s economic stimulus plan, which he says has left the president open to criticism from all sides. “The left says the recovery has sputtered because he didn’t pile up enough debt to stimulate it; the right says the debt already piled up has drowned any prospects of recovery.” Watson says only two things can save Obama from joining George Bush the First in the dustbin of history reserved for single-term presidents: a substantial economic recovery in the next two years (dream on), and the possibility that Republicans will let their own recent success go to their heads, and nominate Sarah Palin or one of her whacked out protégés as their presidential candidate. Common sense would dictate there’s not enough spiked tea on earth to induce the GOP to embrace Mama Grizzly a second time, but this is American politics, and stranger things have happened.