This election increasingly starts looking like 1972. Few liked Nixon but he won in a landslide because his opponent was perceived as batsh**t crazy.
Maybe we have become too fussy in our politics to appreciate what we have.
We want quick fixes for the economy -- even if those are impossible. We are not going to have any economic boom for a long time, and that is probably all for the better. The cure for our recent binge of myopic greed is acceptance of the long-term, low-yield investments that none can sell off quickly. Building capital and bleeding the profits contradict.
Economic management is a legitimate concern of voters, but economic results may beyond the power of politicians to deliver. In the 1930s, Americans seemed content with FDR because even if economic conditions were awful they were getting better. In the 2010s, Americans have yet to show such a wholesome attitude.
If people are unhappy with President Obama as shown in the 2010 election, then they are no less impatient with the Republicans who won in 2010 and have not caused the milk and honey to flow as they promised (except arguably toward their cronies).
As for military realities -- Americans have developed distrust of the Presidency because of the bungled wars of George W. Bush. The effort to thwart a likely series of slaughters by the Libyan dictator has used much the same language as that used to rationalize invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Likewise, our President has no military experience; he has left war to the generals and admirals, as he is a politician and not a soldier by training. Never mind that the invasion of Iraq had a foundation of lies and the intervention in Libya seems factually unassailable; we remember getting burned because of the callow leadership of Dubya and expect much the same now. Some of us almost expect the President to fly onto an aircraft carrier bearing a large banner "Mission Accomplished!" much like his predecessor. Of course if we see the swift demise of the long-time dictator of Libya that looks more like Gulf War I or the invasion of Grenada, then we might see changes in opinion.
The President still exhibits clarity of purpose that Dubya never showed. He remains a stickler for diplomatic and legal niceties. Such bodes well, but we can't see the results yet. Good results will be that Qaddafi ends up dead or under arrest, or that he takes flight -- and the US is not entangled in a war after such an event.
We need remember that Libya is a defender's nightmare. The country is thinly populated. The terrain offers no good defensive points and little cover because it is mostly desert or near-desert. Libya has comparatively few cities; those are easily bypassed and besieged. The Germans and British fought over eastern Libya and western Egypt with rapid advances and retreats during World War II until the Battle of El Alamein, after which the British Eighth Army made a swift and inexorable advance through Libya into Tunisia, country which offers good defensive positions and more cover. Tunisia is already liberated, so the current Libyan Revolution stops at the Tunisian border.
But then there is the obvious:
President Obama is BLACK. Many Americans are never going to accept a black man as President because such violates what they consider the Natural Order of Things -- that America is a white man's country. Maybe a parallel matter applied to Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. Mercifully, racism and male chauvinism are in decline.
