There's a certain logic to what you're saying, but it won't hold true in 2012.
1. 2008 was in large part about President Bush, and in lesser parts about Iraq, the economy, and the sense that the country was heading in the wrong direction.
2. Obama was an unknown quantity, and actually used his mysterious status to great advantage. Hope and change meant whatever the voter wanted it to mean.
3. McCain is unpopular with Republicans and would have been decimated if not for Palin. While they ultimately got less votes, her late arrival to his campaign still helped him avoid a total rout.
4. The novelty factor. Lots of people voted with their American Idol instincts.
2012 will be vastly different. Obama is wearing the 'President Bush' hat now. You can't be the Hope and Change candidate when you're the Man. You can't be the mysterious intellectual outsider-to-the-rescue when everyone watched you run the country into the poorhouse for the last 4 years. Obama's no longer a novelty, either. He'll be hip, and cool, and beloved. Just not respected as a leader.
In short, a lot of the pillars of Obama's strength will be weakened or destroyed by 2012, whereas Palin's will not.
I don’t know, the American people cheered FDR on as the “hope and change” candidate four times. The people are certifiably slow learners.
This next time around we get to run against the Obama "caricature" the Democrats will have created.
It's a good time to WIN.
I also believe we have to get tough on the question of whether or not Democrat politicians can be patriotic. Over the past 64 years it's become pretty obvious they do not have that capacity. They are also unable to stand up to criminals, and given the opportunity they steal. Those who aren't openly homosexual are, in their private lives, at least abnormal. They bribe judges; molest babies; rape young girls; harrass their neighbors; pass taxes that favor their friends and relatives; seek to destroy the rights of the religious to practice their faith in their own way; and, in general, have created such a sordid situation at Interstate highway rest stops that good, decent, honest people who need merely to relieve themselves are fearful of stopping. Even the waterfountains in such places are no longer safe to drink from.