Who Wants to Take Obama's Place?

The Republicans are sharpening their weapons for the upcoming presidential elections. After the debt saga, the campaign for the White House is already in full swing for them.

Here it is: The 2012 presidential campaign has been launched. This time, it’s not about the battle for the Elysée, but for another residence, even more prestigious but much further away than the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. The White House, the U.S. presidential residence, is up for grabs. The next U.S. presidential election will be held in November 2012. Yes, already.

There will be no surprises on the Democrats’ side. Barack Obama should be the candidate for the next term of office. But in the opposing Republican camp, it is quite the opposite; the Grand Old Party has an abundance of candidates. 12 wannabe presidents are already queuing up outside the gates of the White House. Among them are Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, two unsuccessful candidates in recent Republican primaries; Michele Bachmann, the tea party’s muse; and Rick Perry, Governor of Texas since 2000, following in George W. Bush’s footsteps. Then there’s another one, the enigmatic Sarah Palin, whose presidential ambitions we have been aware of since 2008. But the former governor of Alaska has yet to put herself forward as a candidate, so the first battles are being fought without her. Too bad.

Michele Bachmann, The Tea Party’s Muse

The Republican nomination for the next presidential election will be worth a lot, as these 12 candidates well know. Barack Obama’s reelection is far from certain. The Democrat could follow in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter rather than those of Bill Clinton — in other words, taking his political retirement after a single term as president. According to a Gallup poll on August 4, 45 percent of Americans would vote for Obama versus 39 percent for the Republican candidate. Some would say these numbers are a bad omen before the election, but that would be forgetting that the balance of power was reversed in July: 47 percent of Americans said they intended to vote for the GOP candidate, whoever it might be, versus only 39 percent for Barack Obama.

The nomination will be worth a lot and the candidates are getting to work. Some are already doing better than others in this little game. If Mitt Romney started out as the favorite, Michele Bachmann has caught up with him. At a time when the U.S. is concerned about its debt, the tea party camp is celebrating, seeing its regional themes resonate with even greater force than before. On Saturday, Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll, a non-binding, anecdotal vote which has practically become an institution in the U.S. Michele Bachmann took pride in her “victory,” even though neither Mitt Romney nor Rick Perry participated in the poll. The woman who is compared to Sarah Palin saw this as a sign: “Barack Obama will be a one-term president.”

Rick Perry Joins In

For all that, it’s not a question of acting as if the game is already over. Rick Perry has not delayed in putting himself forward as a candidate. The governor of Texas is not ideologically that far from the tea party, as the title of his book, “Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington,” shows. But unlike Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry has experience. He never grows tired of reminding us of this, pointing out his economic record governing Texas, where the unemployment rate is lower than that of the U.S.

Sending a member of the tea party to face Barack Obama would be daring for the Republican Party, a sort of all-or-nothing tactic. But history has shown that Americans are rarely excessive. In 2008, the same voters who had reelected George W. Bush chose a mixed-race senator to take the reins of the country. So…