Obama Re-Election and the Cult of Personality

[Geee]

American Thinker:

Barack Obama has made it official: he is running for re-election. The 2012 presidential election campaign has officially begun. The election will ultimately be a referendum on Barack Obama regardless of whom the Republicans choose as their nominee. Deep in the bowels of the White House and in strategy sessions in Chicago, the Obama team is formulating its campaign strategy convinced that their guy's charisma and delivery combined with a willingness to say anything will result in re-election.

Team Obama knows it will not be able to honestly campaign on the President's record of accomplishments. There is a risk in basing their campaign solely on blaming everything on President Bush and the mantra that things would have been worse if they had not pursued their policy agendas. After all Barack Obama will have been in office for four years by Election Day 2012.

Even the most optimistic of economists and the Federal Reserve itself predict that the economy will not have completely turned around by November 2012, as the unemployment rate will remain around 8-9%. The annual budget deficit will still be in the $1+ Trillion range and the total national debt will have increased over $5.4 Trillion dollars during Obama's first term (more than the debt from the founding of the country in 1789 through 2001). There is also a consensus that the Middle East will still be in turmoil, the threat of terrorism markedly higher and our foreign policy in shambles.

There is little option but to replay the 2008 campaign.