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Two mutually incompatible perspectives on the election
The New York Daily News, which endorsed Obama in 2008, is endorsing Romney in 2012. The reason for the paper’s switch is Obama’s spectacular failures on the economy and his promise to “stay the course” with his failed policies. Or, as Jeffrey Anderson has memorably put it in the Weekly Standard, it’s “become increasingly obvious to voters over time [that] Obama doesn’t really care about the economy.” The spurning of Obama by the Daily News and thirty other papers that previously supported him gives rise to an interesting thought. While the re-election prospects of any other president with Obama’s appalling record would be zero, zilch, nada, Obama is not any other president, because he is nonwhite. Therefore he is in a tight race and could very well win. In short, we have two conflicting perspectives on what may happen in the election. Perspective One: Obama is a woefully unsuccessful president, the economy is in terrible shape, and by his palpable indifference to the economy he has assured that that it will not get better under a second Obama term. Therefore he cannot be re-elected. Perspective Two: Obama is the first nonwhite president and, in the world’s understanding, a world-historical figure; for America to eject him from office would be seen as rejecting nonwhiteness itself, which for our hyper-liberal society would be inconceivable. Therefore he cannot be defeated.
Perspective Two is, more or less, my own; as I’ve said, I personally feel—not based on polls or other data, but based on his racial advantage—that Obama is favored for re-election by two-to-one or perhaps three-to-one odds. But Perspective One is also compelling. Election night will tell us which of these perspectives is correct. Email entry |