I think the better explanation is that he’s still in campaign mode, and has never announced himself as President or leader. It’s just speeches and public appearances. People are still waiting for the President to arrive.
Yes, he’s in campaign mode, the question is why.
Magicians and stage hypnotists know that you can get away with a lot if you can distract the target. The more you want to get away with, the bigger the distraction must be.
Think ‘severe cognitive dissonance’. If you can make this effect strong enough, folks will ignore the unpleasant side. So, as long as Obama stays in campaign mode, pushing strongly and only on positive and vague things, the idea that this positive candidate had anything to do with the current scandals will be hard to accept for a lot of folks.
The IRS scandal was apparently thought necessary to win in 2012. It certainly distracted a lot of Republican organizations and donors, using a handful (88?) of IRS agents. It didn’t even require anybody from the Obama campaign or DNC, so it was done cheaply. On the other side, we keep hearing the Republicans say they are keeping their powder dry and not wasting political capital. The powder got wet, and the political capital rotted away.
Winning in 2012 meant keeping the Senate and blocking change to Obamacare. Now the task is to set up for 2014 and 2016. If he wins both houses again, he’s off to the races again.
Not only are the scandals going to be ignored (as far as any real action) in 2013, so will they be ignored in 2014, they will have no effect on the separate elections in the various districts. The Dems can all run positive campaigns, and deplore the scandals of 2013 (if they even mention them). Obama and his scandals are actually running interference for the Dems in the 2014 election. The individual Dems (where it matters) will distance themselves from Obama. The scandals this year don’t matter as Harry Reid’s Senate will do nothing. If the Dems win the house in 2014, the scandals might not even make it into the history books, except as another event in the long Republican history of ‘McCarthyism’.
A Dem win in 2014 will set up a Dem win in 2016, as there will be little to stop Obama&Co from rewarding friends and punishing enemies to make sure the opposition is weak in 2014.
The Republicans are all in the mode of “let’s not anger anybody, so we get re-elected in 2014”. This leads to a perpetual “let’s not anger anybody” approach, and to eventual extinction. Well, except for the Pauls, father and son, and a few others. And none of them seems to have the necessary skills to outwit the psychology the Dems are using.
One thing that points out the Republican & neo-con naivete is the idea that it would be stupid for Obama to use the IRS in the way he did.
1. If he lost the election it would never have come up
2. He might have lost the election without it, so it was a gamble, and we can argue the risks, but it was quite calculated, not stupid.
3. He won. And with Reid running the Senate, he won’t be impeached.
4. The Republicans have seen this before. When confronted with the evidence against him, Clinton said “Well, we’ll just have to win then”. And he did. Winners don’t always write the history, but they have a real good chance of being able to ignore it.
The Republicans are playing a long, middle game with a don’t lose but don’t win strategy. The Dems are in an end-game mode, willing to risk a lot to get a lot. They got ObamaCare. They got $1T/year in new debt. Like Patton and Sun Tzu, they know that you keep pushing on when the enemy is in retreat.