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President Obama had a sit down with Diane Sawyer on Monday where he happened to mention that he would rather be an awesome one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.   Which is of course the right answer to her question … I mean, what else was he going to say?

But here’s the problem: he is in serious danger of being a mediocre one-term president.  Now, I know I said I believed in the long game.  And I do, I really do.  He’s still got three years after all. Technically.

But he doesn’t really have three years.  The 2012 elections will start in about 18 months so really, he’s got like a year.  Tops.  Because in 16 months he has to start reaching out to the mushy right-of-the-middle, not propose anything bold and stick to the very safe buzzwords like “freedom in Afghanistan” and “protecting marriage” and stuff like that.

But the problem is that he is already there at the mushy middle. What is his big announcement  this week?  That he’s going to freeze domestic spending.  Because that’s never been suggested before.  If he really wanted to be about process, if he really wanted to be about change, if he really wanted to threaten special interests, he should take a hard look at defense spending.  Don’t you think that the programs that suck up the largest amount of our money should be subjected to the same scrutinity that things like the National  Endowment for the Arts and the national parks?

Yea, me too.

And the big danger is that  the emphasis on the long game, the refusal to either be bold or to not disturb the status quo at all does one of two things: 1) makes it look like he’s already running for re-election, 2) that he is naive or unclear what will happen in Congress to his spending cuts or 3) that he isn’t really looking to change very much.

Either way, it’s not good.

Related posts:

1. If it walks like a President and talks like a President
2. The day before the rest of our lives
3. I’d like to talk to you about your son’s progress, America.