Theirs to Lose

According to Peggy Noonan President Obama's only hope for reelection in 2012 is that the Republicans nominate a candidate that seems either "strange, extreme, or barely qualified". Otherwise, the incumbent is toast.

You can read her argument here. Meanwhile, here's an appetizer:

Let’s start with the immediate and go to the overarching. The president is immersed in another stressed and unsuccessful spring after a series of losing seasons. Internationally, he’s involved in a confused effort that involves bombing Libyan government troops and sometimes their rebel opponents, leaving the latter scattered and scurrying. Responsibility to protect is looking like tendency to deflect.

Domestically, the president’s opponents seized the high ground on the great issue of the day, spending and debt, and held it after the president’s speech this week. In last week’s budget duel, the president was outgunned by Republicans in the House and outclassed by Paul Ryan, who offered seriousness and substance as a unique approach to solving our fiscal problems.

In this week’s polls: An Ipsos survey says 69% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, up five points since March. Zogby has only 38% of national respondents saying Mr. Obama deserves re-election, with 55% wanting someone new. Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania in 2008 by double digits; a poll there this week shows only 42% approving his leadership, with 52% disapproving.

Gallup had the president’s support slipping among blacks and Hispanics, with the latter’s numbers dramatic: 73% supported him when he was inaugurated, 54% do now. Support among whites on Inauguration Day was 60%. Now it is 39%.

The American people elected a virtual unknown to the presidency in 2008 because a) they were disenchanted with the GOP, b) Mr. Obama was hip, eloquent, mysterious, and had a winning smile, and c) his election would be historic and a lot of people, especially the young and minorities, wanted to make history happen.

Now the electorate is suffering buyer's remorse and is asking itself what in the world they were thinking when they swooned over a guy who had a résumé that would fit on one half of a post-it note. Noonan is probably right. The White House is the Republicans' to lose in 2012. Fortunately for Mr. Obama, the GOP has shown in the past a strange predilection for opposing young, charismatic Democrats with superannuated pols with one foot in the retirement home.

They may well do something of the sort again.