Obama: A one-term presidency?

President Obama faces “a challenging fight for re-election in 2012,” said Jeremy P. Jacobs in National Journal. A new Quinnipiac University poll found that 49 percent of voters now think he doesn’t deserve a second term. In head-to-head matchups, the president is in a statistical dead heat with two possible GOP candidates, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. (The only Republican he beats handily is Sarah Palin, by 48 percent to 40 percent.) The news for Obama will only get worse, said Jonathan V. Last in The Weekly Standard. Most economic forecasters predict that unemployment in 2012 will remain over 8 percent, and no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has run for re-election with joblessness at such a high level. Unless Obama can pull off a miracle, “he’s toast.”

Don’t get cocky, said Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal. Republicans are feeling giddy after the midterms, but they “should sober up.” Even with a bad economy, beating a sitting president is no mean feat. It also remains to be seen whether any of the candidates, including Sarah Palin, has Ronald Reagan’s “political gifts” for uniting the party and drawing in independents. The GOP establishment will have to work hard to stop “St. Joan of the Tundra,” said Ed Kilgore in The New Republic, and the less-divisive candidates all have serious flaws, too. Huckabee is strong in Iowa but can’t raise money. Romney has lots of money but is guilty of two heresies in a party that has moved far to his right: supporting TARP and initiating government-run health care in Massachusetts. The GOP’s best hope is a dark horse like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, but he’s “not exactly a ball of fire.”

Nonetheless, the economy leaves Obama in a very vulnerable position, said John B. Judis, also in The New Republic. The only way for him to recover the support of white, working-class independents “is to get them jobs.” So Obama had better get on his knees and pray that “a strong and buoyant recovery is about to begin.” Actually, it’s not that dire, said David Weigel in Slate.com. Given the 9.6 percent unemployment rate, Obama shouldn’t be tied with or beating all the GOP hopefuls. But he is. After his 1994 midterm debacle, Bill Clinton was polling 10 percent behind Bob Dole. So, in historical context, the new poll numbers “are a lot more promising for Obama.”