Obama: How a Lame Duck Can Fly

In all the likely outcomes, a reelected President would still face Tea Party gridlock in Congress. How could he overcome it?

By pushing to its limit his Bully Pulpit from next year to the 2014 midterm elections, clipping the crazies’ wings and morphing into a Lame Duck who can still fly for the rest of his term.

As Nature forces Barack Obama to be presidential a week before balloting and Bill Clinton makes his case in Florida, wavering voters must be persuaded that the man Mitt Romney humiliated in the first debate is ready to step up to the Tea Party as he did to his Oval Office challenger from then on.

Second-term presidents have traditionally gone for the history books (just before reelection, Communist-bashing Nixon went to China), and Obama has ample incentive to wipe out his wavering against Boehner and McConnell in the debt-ceiling showdown.

From Inaugural Day on, a reelected Barack Obama would have to be relentless in calling out the new Congress—-no more Grand Bargains or other deals the Tea Party won’t let their leaders honor.

In this final week, after the other storm has abated, the President must make it clear he will use all his power to get the country and the economy moving again.

He has to show there is more mileage on the wings of a Lame Duck than a Wild Goose.