Let’s Call It a Day and Make the Call for Him in 2012

This is a nightcap-text of 2011, written in a “happy hour” climate (nothing too serious, just a bit provocative). Let’s just wrap it up now and bet on him, go for him — the inevitable Barack Obama. If the world does not stop in 2012, if Europe does not implode and if the Middle East does not explode, the American presidential election will be the biggest spectacle on Earth. As things look at the end of December 2011, Obama will be the one on the throne. He will be the king of the party, a pathetic and inglorious party, in a country with a sluggish economy. However, the U.S. is at least giving signs that it will not completely stall, in spite of the exasperating political paralysis.

As long as things don’t worsen, one can get the sense from Americans that everything is tolerable, even Obama, the $15 trillion debt and the unemployment rate at 9 percent, and growing by 0.3 percent. Obama rose slightly in the polls for the past two weeks. Nothing phenomenal has happened here, and one poll shows that Republican Mitt Romney will defeat the Democrat by six points next November. The presidential surveys are very premature. More interesting is that the “us” (the middle class) versus “them” (millionaire-favoring Republicans) is having an effect on Obama’s popularity. The president is even a bit more relaxed, with Hawaiian vacations — although, he is keeping up the chant, “Oh life! Oh luck!”

Speaking of luck, I have arrived at this point: Obama, before everything else, is a fortunate guy — a lucky devil. Let us go back in history to see Obama’s good fortune and how it helped his political career beyond the son-of-a-white-mother-from-Kansas-and-black-Kenyan-father-born-in-Hawaii story. During his candidacy for the Illinois State Senate, a road was opened for Obama by scandals involving his Democratic opponent in the primary and his initial Republican adversary in the election. In the 2008 presidential race, Obama faced John McCain, who is an icon on national security questions, but not so much on the economy. In the end, the campaign was dominated by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Obama at least seemed interested in the subject. His luck!

Furthermore, the luck continues. Now little things, such as the performance of his Republican challengers, are boosting Obama. These people — these Herman Cains, these Michele Bachmanns — appear out of nowhere, have minutes of fame and disappear. There is always Mitt Romney on the stage of the Republican reality show, but he still has not impressed the Republican base. Above all, Republicans seem to be doing what they can to throw Independents and moderates into the arms of Obama through the radicalism of their primary. As The Economist described it, today’s Republican Party is governed not by principles, but by fatwas. The luck of the Democrats could grow further if the extremist wing of the right appoints its own dissident candidate, like Ron Paul, who will suck away Republican votes next November. With these enemies, Obama needs few friends.

Readers with long memories can kick me (figuratively) in less than a year if I am wrong in my divination. Obviously, an election is never in the bag for anyone. Still, when it comes to Obama, a variation of electoral wizard James Carville’s phrase should be used: “It’s the luck, stupid.”*

And for all of you readers with long or short memories, more interested or not, Obamaists or not, hard-core militants or ardent Independents, and people who don’t awake thinking of saving or destroying the person near to them, I wish you good luck and a good life in 2012.

*Editor’s Note: James Carville coined the well-known phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” during Bill Clinton’s campaign against George H.W. Bush.