At the beginning of this year, it appeared that Sarah Palin was dead serious about running for president in 2012, though she wasn’t making any proclamations at that point. Most of the staunch Democrats, said “Yeah, go ahead, you’ll be shown for the idiot you are, and it’ll guarantee Obama’s re-election.” Funny thing has happened in those eight months, in that this horribly naive, hypocritical, insensitive witch, while still not proclaiming herself a candidate, has become a horribly ubiquitous presence, spouting her uneducated gobbledygook at every opportunity and somehow gaining more fans in the process. As a result, Obama’s re-election is not going to be the slam dunk it might have appeared less than a year ago.

           It’s not just the fault of the Fox-News-based idiocy of the Tea Partiers and Birthers. Obama has made some serious errors in judgement, and is finding out the hard way that making promises you can’t keep will lose you fans and supporters as much as any smear campaign from the Limbaughs and Becks would do. He’s managed to make good on his promise of universal health care, getting his bill passed just barely by both houses of Congress, but the climb he’s facing to have it implemented is much bigger than the one Miley Cyrus metaphorically sings about. At best, he’ll have it in place by 2014, or halfway through his second term, IF he gets that far, and IFF there’s no further roadblocks. The latter seems a major problem, as the Republicans appear poised to take back their majorities in both houses this November. Without a solid mandate, “socialized medicine,” as the scare-mongers love to call it, is as likely to be relegated as West Ham United Football club.

              “Mistakes, I’ve made a few….” Yeah, the oil spill wasn’t a good one. I almost understand his reaction, but it didn’t gain him new fans abroad. It’s almost as if he’d been so frustrated, that when he heard that the principal culprit was BP, he jumped at the opportunity to say, “That stands for BRITISH Petroleum. Well, good, then they can’t blame THIS one on me!” Paraphrasing, indeed. The Brits, who treated him like a rock star when he appeared here in 2008 on the campaign trail, were less than amused. It also gave his US opposition the chance to compare his late reaction to this catastrophe to Dubya’s delayed trip to visit the areas most damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It’s not a fair comparison, but to the anti-Obama legions, it is. Obama brought his family to the North Florida coast for a couple days holiday, just to encourage and ensure the public that it was safe to go there, but it looked suspiciously like a photo-op coupled with damage control. The rest of his holiday was spent elsewhere.

                 Now comes his decision to OK the building of a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero, and the irony that the mosque is due to be completed and opened on the 11th of September, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the Twin Tower bombings. You want to see this guy do the right thing, but there seemed to be no right decision. He can’t say no to it, because as he expressed, it’s about religious freedom, and that being Muslim shouldn’t mean you’re automatically a terrorist. Unfortunately, there’s too many who DO believe that Islam = Terrorism, and Obama’s decision also re-opens the accusations that maybe he really is Muslim. Recent polls have shown an increase in that belief. I’m sure he’d have been happier if it had just been a 500-seat Taco Bell that was being commissioned, but with the mosque, it was insensitive bastard if you do, insensitive bastard if you don’t.

                  Oh, and there’s that war thing. Yeah, he made good on his promise to evacuate the troops from Iraq, but that’s little consolation for the fact that he’s had to escalate the efforts in Afghanistan. His enemies have pointed out that there are more troops there now than Bush had ever sent. A shame that his plummeting ratings have translated to some naysayers putting Obama’s presidency in the same league as one that history should eventually show to be the worst ever, albeit probably not until after Dubya’s dead.

                 It’s funny to me that the allure and power of the presidency continues to attract new hopefuls every four years. If you look at pictures of Clinton, both Bushes, Jimmy Carter, Nixon, even Reagan (when the hair dye wasn’t handy), when each started their presidency, and compare to their look when they left, the job ages you so radically, you wonder why anyone would want it. You understand why so many ex-presidents choose to just play golf for the rest of their lives. Obama’s gotten grayer in just 19 months, and he’s not even 50 yet.