Sure, President Obama would like to be a two-term president. Once a person decides he or she wants to be president at all, that's pretty much settled. The problem is, he's gone to such lengths to govern from the middle, to avoid angering anyone (except his shrinking base of support), to appease the howling lunatics of the ideological right, that he can't really be a credible progressive. He never was particularly hard over on progressive policies anyway. He was never an advocate of universal health care. That was John Edwards. He was never an absolutist against the war(s). That was Bill Richardson. But great-googly-moogly he talked a good game!
But here's the thing: the red meat right is never going to love him. If the moderate right (by which I mean a view of the world that would have made the John Birch Society blush only thirty years ago) prevails, they have Romney, they don't need Obama. And against the likes of Perry or Bachman, any pragmatic realism is only seen as weakness.
So the question is, does the majority of the American electorate want the government to sponsor even the meager social safety net we have now or not? Do they want all government regulation, of child labor, worker safety, environmental protection to be eradicated, leaving us to catch up with China on a slave labor-based prosperity, or not? Do they want people who make millions of dollars (and create no jobs, whatever Boehner calls them) to be allowed to pay no taxes or not?
If the answers are yes, then Obama has no chance anyway. But if the answers are no, then he needs to seize whatever executive authority he has and govern against Congress. He needs to give the American people a glimpse of what a useful government can provide in a time of difficulty. It may be too late. On the other hand, he has nothing to lose.
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