“Good politicians create coalitions and then tend them carefully…. draw people in from the opposite party and then make their own party (like Reagan and Roosevelt), both bigger and different than it was before. Obama inherited a coalition by chance and dismantled it during his first year of office, having never understood what it was made of, how it developed, how fragile it was and what it would take to maintain”

--Noemie Emery in the weekly Standard

IT’S OBVIOUSLY UNTHINKABLE that unselfish humans would vote for a Republican to be the next president considering the agenda of the Wealth party. Barack Obama, for all his misadventures, is a brainy and decent man even if he’s proved to be pretty gutless. What he should have done, four years ago, was to say:

 “I intend to be a one-term president. I plan to fight every day of the next four years to improve life for the have-nots. To bring the bankers and their greedy Wall Street acolytes to account. To make the rich pay more of the burden we all share. To end the unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These and the other things I will work for unceasingly and without compromise will be met with fierce opposition. They will doom any attempt to run for a second term. Nevertheless, that is my plan”.

These are also the promises he should make for his second term. Because, of course, he should have another chance if only because—lacking a Democrat primary or a third party-- what in heaven’s name is the alternative?