Let's see - since the end of World War 2, well within the life span of almost all of the existing people who are likely voters, how many Democratic Presidents were reelected based on their own 4-year performance?
Trueman - had a partial term after FDR died, won in 1948 but lost in 1952.
Johnson - had a partial term after JFK was assassinated, won in 1964 but didn't/wouldn't run in 1968.
Carter - 1976 to 1980.
Clinton - 1982 - 2000. The exception because he ran, very hard, to the center after 1994.
The Presidents who won a second term based on their performance were all Republicans.
So, will BHO run towards the center to be reelected in 2012 like Clinton did? That's the real issue not all of the false flags raised in this editorial.
This will be made easier for BHO with big GOP wins in the 2010 Congressional election... just as the GOP Congress facilitated Bill Clinton's run to the center and helped produce the famed budget surpluses the Democrats now claim were the result of Clinton's presidency.
In reality, Truman had essentially two terms in office - under the 22nd Amendment he wouldn't have been qualified to run for reelection in 1952, if not for the clause in it which grandfathered him into eligibility.No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.And in fact Truman did not run in 1952; Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in that year.
And, in a counterfactual, Kennedy would almost certainly have won reelection in 1964 had he not been shot. Johnson's election could be counted as a second term for Kennedy much as GHWB's election was a "third Reagan election."Those two cases water down your thesis somewhat - but the point remains that since 1950 no Democrat president has been able to defend what it pleases them to call "liberalism" in a presidential election after having modeled it in the White House for four years. And indeed, they inverted the meaning of "liberalism" in the 1920s to make it a euphemism for socialism.