These days Barack Obama looks like he’s channeling Herbert Hoover, but Arnold Goldstein thinks he may really have more in common with Grover Cleveland.

[L]et’s say Obama loses in November. He has a ready made excuse for his defeat. Obama can say that the forces of darkness (i.e. opponents of gay marriage) are to blame for his defeat while patting himself on the back for his “courage” in supporting same sex marriage. It also helps to position him for a comeback in 2016 or 2020. Make no mistake. If Obama loses this fall it won’t be the last we see of him. By that time with a greater presence of voters born after 1980 chances are there will be more voters in favor of gay marriage which would give Obama an opportunity to claim he was ahead of the curve.

So while Obama might have come out in favor of gay marriage far sooner than he wanted to do so. But now that he has come out of the closet on the issue it could work to his advantage if not in this election then perhaps in the next one or the one after that.

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James Pethokoukis thinks the same thing.

Might Obama try to grab the nomination in 2016 and take another crack at Romney?

1. Obama, always trim and fit, would be only 55 on Election Day 2016.

2. Obama would likely still have a deep reservoir of support among key Democratic interest groups including (most importantly) African Americans, gays, young voters, and the educated elite.

3. Many Democrats might be inclined to give an historic president a second chance, reasoning he was dealt an impossibly bad economic hand by George W. Bush. “Bush got two terms, and Obama just one? Please.”

4. While there could potentially be some big name rivals in 2016, including Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, none seem as formidable as Ronald Reagan was to Ford in 1980.

5. The economy the next four years could be pretty rough thanks to high levels of U.S. debt and a possible eurozone implosion. The Obama years might be subject to some positive revisionist history by a friendly media. And as one gloomy economic analyst told me recently, “Whichever party wins the White House in 2012 won’t win again for 20 years.”

I can see that 2016 Obama-Warren ticket already …

The bad news is that they’re right: he could very possibly come back and try running again. The good news is: we’re already sitting around contemplating Obama losing in November as the most probable outcome.

Hat tip to Jim Geraghty.

Good Romney response ad.

Daniel Greenfield has an absolutely brilliant essay on this year’s election, loaded with deadly accurate strokes of wit, explaining exactly who it is that the Republican candidates are running against.

In 1980, when President Reagan asked Americans, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago”, it was still possible to campaign on a theme as simple as the job performance of the other guy. But now, 32 years later, the campaign hinges on a much more fundamental split among the voting population.

Romney appeals to voters who are dissatisfied with the last four years. Obama appeals to voters who are dissatisfied with America.

This basic gap was obscured in the 2008 campaign by the window trappings of inspiration. Among all the plastic pillars and stolen quotes from poets who stole them from sermons, it was harder to see that the underlying theme of the campaign was dissatisfaction with America. But in 2012, Obama can no longer run as a reformer or an optimist.

The coalition that he committed to last year is a coalition of those who are unhappy with America, not in the last four years, but in the last two-hundred years. Its core is composed of groups that fear democracy and distrust the will of the people. There is no optimism here, but a deeply rooted pessimism about human nature and the country as a whole. It is the Democratic Party’s coalition against democracy.

Read the whole thing.

Disillusioned former students who supported Obama in ’08 sing of their unhappiness.

Hat tip to Jake McGuire.

The Obama Campaign is denying any knowledge of the fellow in the “Mitt Romney Killed My Wife” video, and Jim Geraghty (via email) responds by suggesting that [t]he new hold music when you dial the Obama campaign [ought to be]:

NSFW insofar as the lyrics are actually understandable without a written text.

Yo man
Yo
Open up man
What do you want man?
My girl just caught me
You let her catch you?

How could I forget
That I had given her an extra key?
All this time she was standing there
She never took her eyes off me

While American Sanya Richards-Ross was accepting the gold medal for winning the 400-meter dash, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was giving an interview.

The world’s fastest man, a Jamaican who won the 100-meter dash, stopped what he was doing to listen to the Star-Spangled Banner.

Instead of continuing to talk to the interviewer, he turned around, pointed at the flag, and indicated to the reporter that he would like to watch in silence.

Video of Bolt’s interview has gone viral.

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Of course, not everybody feels the same way about the American National Anthem.

and

Washington Times story

Hat tip to Sarah Jenislawski.

Hat tip to Darlene Meader Riggs and Clarice Feldman.

Hat tip to Sarah Jenislawski and Anne Tiffin Taylor.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

The Daily Caller has gotten an inside look at Richard Miniter‘s new book, and has some bombshell details.

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. …

In Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him, Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the “kill” mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March. Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett persuaded him to hold off each time, according to the book.

Miniter, a two-time New York Times best-selling author, cites an unnamed source with Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.

Obama administration officials also said after the raid that the president had delayed giving the order to kill the arch-terrorist the day before the operation was carried out, in what turned out to be his fourth moment of indecision. At the time, the White House blamed the delay on unfavorable weather conditions near bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

But when Miniter obtained that day’s weather reports from the U.S. Air Force Combat Meteorological Center, he said, they showed ideal conditions for the SEALs to carry out their orders.

“President Obama’s greatest success was actually his greatest failure,” Miniter told The Daily Caller Friday. ”Leading From Behind,“ he said, traces the arc of six key Obama administration decisions, and shows how the president made them — and, often, failed to make them.

When I tried to open the Daily Caller link this morning, Firefox initially blocked access, warning that this site had been reported as a site distributing malware.

It is evident that someone on the left was sufficiently angry and alarmed by the Daily Caller’s scoop that a false malware complaint was filed to deter traffic.