President Gerald R. Obama

As President Very Smart is treading water over the latest economic crisis caused by businessmen in private jets or the Tea Party or by the Republicans or by Republican Tea Party members flying in a private jet to meet with the executives of oil companies, he is beginning to look like an One Term President.

One Term Presidents are those Presidents that start out like such a good idea. Hey, George Herbert Walker Vanderbilt Carnegie Bush seemed like he would be a great President. He hung around Reagan, smiled a lot, and seemed to communicate in a language that was close to English. He ran against Michael Dukakis, who had one of the worst personalities in the history of politics. Reporter: “Mr. Dukakis, you are against the death penalty. Would you have the same opinion if your wife was gang raped and murdered?" Dukakis: “Sure. Why not?”

Then as time wore on, First President Bush began throwing up on the Japanese and look on with amazement at cash registrars. He lost his bid for re-election to Bill Clinton, who’s campaigned on the promise to “feel your pain and so much more”. Bush, who looked like a cinch for re-election about a year before the election, lost to a man whose campaign song was “I’m Your Boogie Man”.

President Obama’s situation is worse than First President Bush’s. He has little or no power of persuasion. His response to any crisis is to give a little lecture to those people that didn’t go to an Ivy League school. His stimulus package didn’t stimulate the economy. He did kill Osama Bin Laden, but there was only one Bin Laden to kill and there’s only so much bowing up you can do about that. He can’t run on his record.

So what will be Team Obama's (sorry, I’ve been reading a lot of Politico) strategy for the upcoming election? To understand, it, we must go back in time when another President was trying to win an election.

In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford was running for his party’s nomination despite the fact that he was boring as sin and nothing he tried worked either (Win Buttons; Nelson Rockefeller). His opponent for the nomination was Ronald Reagan and Ford was having a tough time.

In another effort to be brilliant, for the Michigan primary—his home state—Ford’s campaign came up with this idea to travel the state by train, giving speeches at “whistle stops”, kind of like Harry Truman.

So there was President Ford, at the Battle Creek, Michigan whistle stop giving his President Ford speech. In the middle of it, a heckler said, “You blew it”. Ford, not missing a beat said, “We blew it in the right direction”**.

That is President Obama’s 2012 theme in a nutshell. Bush 2 left the country so bad off that we needed a Treasury secretary that forgot to pay his taxes. Bush 2 gave so much money to rich people that the country is going super broke and we need to raise taxes on those rich people because it is their patriotic duty. We’re blowing it in the right direction: Higher taxes, lower expectations, and more green jobs.

Oh yeah, he is going to portray his opponent, no matter who it is, as some sort of whack job.

It might work. Ford barely beat Reagan and was over thirty point down in the polls when the Fall campaign season began. Ford beat the drum about what a weirdo Carter was (looks at women and thinks about what they look like in their underwear) and how the Ford administration blew the country in the right direction. Ford lost to Carter by two percentage points and might have won if he hadn’t liberated Poland.

So, it is no sure thing that Obama will lose. The Republicans might blow it.

**Ford’s actual quote: “We blew it in the right direction, young man, and those of you who don't agree--and if you would go out and look for a job, you would get one.” Not exactly the best retort, but I like that the President of the United States told a heckler to get a job.