Does Obama Have Political Capital Left?

Yesterday, was a bad one for President Barack Obama as the GOP won three very important special elections. One year ago yesterday, President Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States and in the short period of time between then and today - almost all of his political capital has been spent trying to pass universal health care in the United States. As of today, universal health care is still not the law of the land and with yesterday's giant GOP victories - President Obama could go down in history as the only President to spend all of his political capital on an issue that he eventually does not get passed into law. It's not like President Obama did not know what would happen when he decided to make universal health care the main priority during his first year in office.

Over a decade before, President Bill Clinton decided that the time was right for universal health care in the United States and he failed too. Now President Obama will be treated like a lame duck President with more than three years still left in his first term as President. When are liberal democrats going to learn that the American people are not liberals by their very nature? For decades, even when a democrat is elected to the presidency, every time he tries to go down the same old liberal path - most Americans turn on him and head right back to the GOP. That exact thing happened to Bill Clinton in the 1990's and then again yesterday it also happened to President Barack Obama.

President Bill Clinton survived the terrible defeat of universal health care in the 1990's to win reelection to another term as President. However, President Obama might not be as lucky as President Clinton because there is one huge difference between now and when Bill Clinton was President. That difference is an economy that is still in full blown recession and an outlook that unemployment will not start to go back down for several more years. Also, I believe the American people will be less forgiving of President Obama over this whole universal health care issue, because they will rightly see that he should have known better after watching President Clinton crashed and burned on that same issue less than two decades earlier.

Like President Clinton, President Obama is a well liked man even though most Americans may disagree with some of his more extreme liberal views. That likability issue could help President Obama rebuild some of his political capital, but it will never be greater than it was after he won election last November. While most Americans have forgotten this fact, let me repeat it here so that everyone can understand how political fortunes are won and lost at the White House. After 911, President Bush was one of the most popular President's ever to serve in the White House - but over the years his popularity dropped steadily as he refused to listen to the people that first elected him to office. At this point in time, President Obama runs the risk of following in President George W. Bush's footsteps - if he does not learn from history and stop governing from the extremes.