RUTHFULLY YOURS

Conventional wisdom holds that incumbent presidents are hard to beat. Certainly, they have advantages. While out rousing the base and grubbing for votes, it helps to have Air Force One and a rollaway presidential podium at your disposal. But incumbents do in fact lose. Jimmy Carter lost. The first George Bush lost. Mr Obama’s approval rating is not yet disastrously low, but his policies are less popular than he is. If the economy is still struggling next year, he is at risk.

And it might be. Unemployment is high and falling only slowly. The housing market is still on its knees, leaving many mortgage borrowers with negative net worth. Consumer confidence has dropped lately, not risen. The fiscal stimulus is fading – and if Republicans continue to outmanoeuvre the administration on budget policy, it may fade more abruptly than the economy can withstand. The Federal Reserve is starting to divide on whether monetary policy needs tightening.

Additional monetary stimulus now looks unlikely unless the recovery goes into reverse. Mere sluggish growth – less than Mr Obama may require – will not move the Fed to act. A strong Republican’s chances in 2012 might therefore be fair to good. All the party needs is a strong Republican.

Last week, a poll for the New York Times and CBS asked Republicans to say whether they were enthusiastic about any of their likely presidential candidates and, if so, which. Perhaps suspecting a trick question, 56 per cent declined to name anyone.

Sarah Palin, arousing the enthusiasm of just 4 per cent, seems out of favour. Mike Huckabee, formerly governor of Arkansas, now an amiable cable-TV host, topped the poll with just 9 per cent. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, presidential contender in 2008 and ex-officio frontrunner for the 2012 nomination, came second with 8 per cent. Almost tying that score was Donald Trump – attention addict, avowed billionaire, reality-TV blusterer and valiant denier of male-pattern baldness (“I refute it thus”).

Mr Huckabee may choose not to run. Let us suppose – let us hope – that Mr Trump is only joking. How strong a candidate would Mr Romney be? One does not wish to seem overly negative, but it has to be a drawback that as governor of Massachusetts he pioneered a close variant of Mr Obama’s healthcare reform, a policy that every self-respecting Republican voter loathes like no other. Mr Obama delights in needling him, thanking him for leading the way on the Democrats’ signature achievement.

Mr Romney’s answer is that he favours letting each state decide for itself how to do healthcare reform. Substantively, there is actually something to be said for that, but it does not help him much politically. He cannot attack Obamacare as savagely as the party requires when he gave his own state much the same system. The fact that his record as a Rino (Republican In Name Only) governor did not prove instantly fatal to his candidacy proves the weakness of the field.

To talk of weakness, by the way, is not to say that the Republicans lack candidates who might be good presidents. Mr Romney might be a good president. The issue is electability. The party must choose a nominee and the country must then vote that person into office. The Republicans’ problem is that the party’s energised electorate has drifted so far from the middle that one kind of electability may rule out the other.

Tim Pawlenty, the successful two-term governor of Minnesota, is much touted. He is an impressive man and by ordinary standards a staunch conservative – but not staunch enough for the Tea Party. He had to retract his earlier support for a carbon cap-and-trade law. He is emphasising his religion (Catholic-turned-evangelical) and playing up the social conservatism. The party faithful are unconvinced, sensing Romney-like fluidity. On the enthusiasm question, he was named by 1 per cent.

Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, might also be a fine president. But he too is impaired in the eyes of many Republican activists. He called for a “truce” on issues such as abortion – a deeply suspect position. He has been a successful and popular governor. As a former federal budget director and fiscal-policy nerd, he is a man for these times. As a social liberal (comparatively speaking) and fiscal conservative, he has been given an easy ride by the press. But none of this will get him the nomination. How many Republicans declared their enthusiasm for Mr Daniels in that recent poll? Again, a resounding 1 per cent.

In last November’s elections, the Republican rank and file threw control of the Senate away by ejecting strong candidates and nominating duds they knew might lose. They did it with pride: they had a point to make. Will they adopt the same approach in 2012 and proudly hand victory to a beatable Mr Obama? They are thinking about it.

clive.crook@gmail.com