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There’s No Cure for the Republican Fever

By Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

President Obama, speaking in the wake of a horrendous jobs report on Friday, made an interestingly hopeful prediction about a prospective (and now, somewhat less likely) second term. Obama predicted that his winning would prod Republicans in Congress to stop being so crazy and start cutting deals:

"It will be coming to a head in this election. We're going to have as stark a contrast as we've seen in a very long time between the two candidates. 2008 was a significant election, obviously. But John McCain believed in climate change. John believed in campaign finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. There were some areas where you saw some overlap." 

"In this election, the Republican Party has moved in a fundamentally different direction. The center of gravity for their party has shifted."… 

"I believe that if we're successful in this election, when we're successful in this election, that the fever may break, because there's a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn't make much sense because I'm not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again."

This is the kind of thing an incumbent needs to say in order to avoid a conceptual trap. In order to get a second term, he needs to promise some kind of positive agenda. But such an agenda leaves him open to questions about why he didn’t accomplish it in his first term. Obama is offering a simple answer: He’ll get it done because, as a lame duck, Republicans will no longer be obsessed with defeating him.

(More here.)