I dunno… that’s the anti-Obama spin Fox News would like to put on it, but I figure a few deadly terror attacks over the next few weeks might encourage calls to pull troops from Iraq (“Enough is enough!”) and send them all to Afghanistan (“Finish them off, already!”)
Osama was just too killable a target for serious regrets about taking him out.
Jumping in late without reading the thread, but in a quick skim, at least, I don’t see anything about the Democratic nomination.
I think one of the effects of taking out bin Laden is that the chance that anyone remotely serious will challenge Obama in the Democratic primaries just went from fairly low a week ago, to essentially zero now.
And the absence of such a challenge unquestionably would increase Obama’s odds of being re-elected.
So ObL’s death increases Obama’s re-election chances. QED.
This was already going to be a tough sell for the Republican nominee. In 2008, you had a race between McCain and Obama. Neither had been President and McCain could plausibly argue he had more foreign policy experience than Obama had.
But in 2012, Obama will be running as an incumbent. Nobody is going to be able to argue he doesn’t have experience at that point. And whoever the Republican candidate will be, it won’t be somebody with that level of experience. So the Republican argument was going to have to be that Obama had failed to the point where it was worth replacing him with an unknown quantity.
And that is going to be a lot more difficult argument to make now.
I doubt it - Obama should be carrying on the war on terror, and terror is going to strike back if it can.
If the intel they got off the ObL laptop is as good as they are saying, maybe this will be followed up by a wave of arrests and/or other strikes against various terrorist leaders and cells.
Or maybe not. There were several Dopers who were quite sure that killing bin Laden would make no difference at all.
It’s a good thing that ObL is dead, but
Regards,
Shodan
A successful terrorist attack would certainly hurt Obama since he’s the guy in charge. The idea that AQ is desperately retaliating could reduce the blame a little bit, but I don’t know. Even if there are reprisals I don’t think anyone with serious political aspirations would say that taking out bin Laden was a bad idea.
It’s already been forgotten somemwhat, but the killing would help smooth over the fact that the Obama administration didn’t stop the underwear bomber. The national security apparatus didn’t stop him, so if the guy hadn’t been a complete reject, he might have succeeded and the administration’s record would look very different.
As mentioned previously, it didn’t seem to work out that way with Bush 41. Although I don’t see any of the current Republicans with the same kind of political and campaign skills as Slick Willie.
I don’t see that it will be all that significant. Maybe Obama escaped a serious incident by pure luck, but he did escape it with the underwear guy. You can’t counter “I got the guy who killed 3,000 Americans” with “oh yeah, but you didn’t stop the clown who couldn’t get his thumb up his ass with both hands and a flashlight”.
ISTM that it would take another major incident, that could in some way plausibly be blamed on Obama’s failure, and that killed a significant number of civilians, to counter the death of ObL as a feather in Obama’s foreign policy cap.
Sure there will be ups and downs for BHO, but this is a big net plus for him under most reasonable scenarios. What he should do is try to convert this into some kind of domestic achievement - use it to push his ideas on the economy. Maybe no more than “look busy and wait for the economy to recover on its own” or even 'look busy and hope the Republicans screw up". But at least look busy, especially on the domestic front.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s why I said “difficult” and not “impossible”. There have been candidates that have convinced voters it was better to switch to an unknown quantity rather than stick with what they have. Clinton did it in 1992, Reagan did it in 1980, and Carter did it in 1976 - and then you’ve got to go back to Hoover in 1932 and Taft in 1912. So it’s rare - in most cases people are going to stick with the incumbent President.
I think we’re agreeing here. Honestly the underwear bomber thing didn’t seem to hurt them much anyway - it got laughed off the front page - but it’s something I could have imagined a GOP candidate trying to use in 2012. With bin Laden dead, that wouldn’t make a dent.
I would agree with that also.
Interestingly enough, apart from Taft and Carter, guess what was the issue that got everyone of those elected?
The economy. Taft won because Teddy split the vote.
Carter is the real outlier - he won because of Ford’s stupid remark about Poland, which could be seen as a foreign policy issue. But also because of the misery index and stagflation and high oil prices.
Yes, we are agreeing. Osama’s end puts a good deal of polish on Obama’s foreign policy actions,
And why not? BHO did a good thing here, and deserves the credit. McCain said he would not go into Pakistan, Obama did go in, and it worked out. Good for him.
And it is a bit reassuring, not just for the future of my party but the US in general - even people like John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh are giving credit where credit is due.
We don’t have to bicker about everything.
Regards,
Shodan
You can take Rush Limbaugh off that list.
Consider him struck.
Regards,
Shodan
I think the key factor was still Watergate. Carter was promising a fresh start.
And I agree with you on Taft. And interestingly enough, there was a major third party candidate in the 1980 and 1992 elections as well.
So we have three elections with a third party candidate splitting votes. A party recovering from the forced resignation of its President. And the Great Depression.
That pretty much shows what it’s going to take to defeat Obama in 2012.
Quoth Marley23:
You’d think that, but then again, 9-11 certainly seems to have helped Bush.
I’m thinking 2012 Obama will be viewed as a strong and graceful statesman with a track record of success and the GOP as a bunch of infighting buffoons whose policies change depending on which way the wind is blowing that day. The only weapon the GOP has right now is to try to prevent Obama from getting anything useful done. They will spend the next two years trying to wreck everything in an attemp to slow Obama’s momentum, and that will make them look even worse.
…unless it succeeds. I mean, we kind of have to admit that the Republicans are very good at destroying their opponents.
You mean Taft lost. Wilson won in 1912. Taft won in 1908.
Wait, what? I thought Carter won because Ford pardoned Nixon.
I enjoyed this:
It provides youtube links to a Trump interview and Obama’s statement about bin Laden and asks you to “compare/contrast recent public statements by billionaire Donald Trump and President Obama.”
Then it asks which speaker demonstrates leadership, citizenship, etc.
I thought it was nicely done.
This has been mentioned quite a bit. But I think there is an important difference between the two cases.
Bush 41 “won” the first Gulf War. The enemy, Saddam Hussein and Iraq, had invaded another foreign country, Kuwait.
Obama “won” the battle of Osama bin Laden. The enemy had attacked New York, etc. This feels like a more important victory, because it was over an enemy that actually killed a lot of American civilians.
I get the feeling that this produces stronger emotions.
But of course this doesn’t guarantee anything, with the election more than a year away.
Obama is in the process of punishing some bankers. The people will love it. The bankers brought the economy down and rewarded themselves with piles of tax money. A nice perp walk with some Goldman bankers would help his reelection.
The REpubs are pushing the conservative old folks away by attacking Medicare.
Benny Ladens death is a positive, but there are bigger issues.