Is President Obama's Second Term a Failure After The First 100 Days?

Even the liberal media is starting to question if the newly reelected President’s second term is a failure? They're starting to ask tough questions. Gun control died in the Democratic Senate. He lost sequestration. The debt bill is coming up again. The President’s poll numbers are dropping. The public is once again tuning out his speechifying. His bluff on Syria not crossing the red line in the sand on chemical or biological weapons was called. The coverup on Benghazi is starting to blow open. The mishaps with Homeland Security in Boston are surfacing. Many of his cabinet appointments, first and second term, are mediocrities, especially when compared to the Lincoln Cabinet. His press conference this week, the conference in which the President acknowledged in his answers that he didn’t know anything about anything, was panned by the media. The wonderful columnist, Peggy Noonan, has written he’s not a lame duck yet – just lame. 100 days of a second term of 1,461 days have passed without any significant accomplishments. Therefore, it must be a failure. That’s clearly not the case. By that measure every President since FDR is a failure. JFK accomplished little in 2 ½ years, much less 100 days, but he’s considered a success. Political popularity is cyclical. Anything can happen in the remaining 1,361 days – a foreign policy crisis, a domestic emergency, in which he can appear Presidential. A major win on immigration reform could restore luster in the liberal media eyes. “Tax reform” with increased taxes would make his liberal critics happy. They will be elated if he can replace a conservative Supreme Court Justice with a liberal. They will be blown away if the Democrats retain the Senate and regain the House in the 2014 elections. He will, alas, preserve the core of ObamaCare. The economy is showing improvement. Home sales and prices are up. Foreclosures are down. Auto sales are up. Unemployment is down. That’s the measure that counts. The Republicans are still in disarray. That makes him politically strong by default. The President still controls the Bully Pulpit. President Obama failed on gun control because he tried. No attempt was made to take on the NRA after the Aurora, Colorado theatre shootings because of Election Day fears of the NRA. Sandy Hook Elementary School occurred after Election Day. The President was reelected and gained two Senators. The political time was right to fight for gun control. The political problem with the sudden shift to gun control was that it took the pressure off his agenda while he still had substantial goodwill. Another problem though is that no electoral mandate existed for his agenda. He ran an extremely negative, personal campaign in which he out-organized the Republicans. He hid, albeit not as well as in 2008, his extreme leftwing political agenda. Multiple Choice question: Assuming the President is now a lame duck, should be spend the remaining 1,361 days of his second term A) Packing his bags and returning home (His press conference suggestion); B) Playing golf 24/7 363 days a year; C) Continue his campaign tour South of the Border; D) Speechify ad nauseum; E) None of the above; F) All of the above.