At this point there are two interesting sets of questions to be answered. Set one: will President Obama face a primary challenge and who will be in the running to be the Republican nominee? Set two: who will be the nominees of the two major parties?
In my lifetime, a number of sitting presidents have been denied a second term. Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush come to mind. What do they have in common? In every case they had done things that really ticked off the electorate: unpopular war, Nixon pardon, Iran embassy hostages, breaking a no new tax promise, respectively.
Two years from now, will Barack Obama be seen to have ticked off the electorate? Will his phrase be "screwed up health insurance?" Will it, like Herbert Hoover's, be "ignored the bad economy?" Or will he be reelected? These are questions we will be exploring over the next two years.
Let the seminar begin!
