2010 is not a parallel to 1994, 1894, or to any other noteworthy year identified by various pundits across the political spectrum. What worked sufficiently well in the 1980’s and the 1990’s for Presidents Reagan and Clinton will not be appropriate for the myriad of challenges facing our nation in 2010 and beyond.
The 2010 midterm elections at the National, State and local levels merely reflected the country’s move back to its political equilibrium. Essentially the 2008 elections were a historical anomaly and won’t be repeated for at least another decade – if ever again. American liberalism has been discredited by its own actions and inactions. The Democratic Party will likely be the one to implode over the next 10 years – not the Republicans.
President Obama will be a single-term President similar to Presidents Hoover and Carter – two other ostensibly intelligent people who were not temperamentally or politically cut out for the Oval Office. The famous “Peter Principle” of individuals rising within organizations to their levels of incompetence was applicable to Hoover and Carter, and is now applicable to Obama. He should have stayed as a relatively competent U.S. Senator.
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President Obama was the accidental victor in 2008. The start of the Great Recession (Big Bust & national deleveraging) began before the Presidential elections. Furthermore the Republican alternative ticket was incredibly weak. If Mitt Romney had been the Vice-Presidential Candidate, we would have had a President McCain. Sarah Palin might be loved by the extreme right, but she won’t be elected to any national office.