Andrew Malcolm says that the president’s hot-mic gaffe yesterday feeds right into Romney’s campaign strategy:
A main strain of Romney’s assaults has been basically, Given the spending, chronic ineptness and apologies for America, can you imagine what Barack Obama would do in a second term unrestrained by any need to face voters ever again?
That’s an effective line because it leaves the worst things possible to voters’ imagination. And there is no response. What can Obama say, “My secret plans aren’t as bad as you think”?
What makes Obama’s Monday blunder so bad is that it doesn’t come from any sort of dismissable ignorance by someone who spent formative childhood years in Indonesia. It was clearly backstage conniving on Obama’s part and feeds directly into Romney’s ‘Can you imagine’ line.
Plus, it fits with the suspicions of millions that the community organizer has unspoken plans to take America in a transformative direction involving much more government. How else to explain his baldly touting more domestic energy while reducing federal drilling permits and torpedoing the Keystone pipeline?
The Etch-a-Sketch line by a Romney aide played into the meme that he might remake himself for the general election, something every successful primary candidate does to reach the broader audience necessary to win beyond one party. In 2008, the autumn Obama promising a centrist fiscal policy was a far cry from the spring primary fellow vying with Hillary Clinton for union support.
Now, Obama’s gaffe suggests to opponents their suspicions are credible about the Democrat’s hidden agenda that he sought secretly to discuss with the Russian.
But here’s something I haven’t seen anyone comment on — the title of this blog post. There are, after all, two possible interpretations of what he said. The conventional explanation is that he means that, since the Constitution as amended only allows two terms for a president, he won’t be running again. But considering his radical background, if one were of a conspiratorial bent, one would wonder if what he really meant was that after the next election, he’ll come up with some way to hold on to power indefinitely. Fortunately, given the attitude of much of the military toward him, a constitutional suspension is pretty unlikely, regardless of any interest he might have of being president for life.
[Update a while later]
Obama is enabling a return of the USSR. Well, again, given his red-diaper upbringing, that would make sense.