Three years after storming the White House with the "fierce urgency of now," President Obama has a new message for his reelection campaign: Be patient, democracy is big and tough and messy. "When I said, Change we can believe in, I didn't say, Change we can believe in tomorrow."After all, Bush left a bigger mess than he realized.
He didn't hide it, he just didn't say it. It's the Chicago Way.
In Chicago, Obama went even further: "I have to admit, I didn't know how steep the climb was going to be. Because we didn't realize -- we just found out a week ago that the economy that last few months in 2008 was even worse than we had realized."
Bush! Bush! Bush! How much worse can it get three years ago?
Coffee alert!
In 2008, Obama was a relative newcomer when compared with his opponents, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican John McCain, and his inspiring, if vague, campaign themes allowed supporters to project their own meanings onto his candidacy.
People looked for dirt on The One, and they couldn't find any. They hoped he was clean, but he had never changed anything.
"The case will be made by numbers: Is the stock market up or down, is the jobs number up or down, unemployment, housing starts?" Jamieson said. Toast. He's toast.
"There's a tendency to overpromise and overestimate the power of the presidency. He made all those mistakes as a candidate. It helped him get elected. But it all but guaranteed he would fail to meet the expectations in his governance."
Obama's advisers say his supporters will mobilize once they know which Republican will challenge Obama next fall. Voter intensity can be driven as much by dislike of a challenger as by enthusiasm for the incumbent. This is their hope.
So we can anticipate a nice, clean election focused on the issues. Sure.