Although it is way, way too early to even begin to think of 2012, it is possible that President Obama will not choose to run again in 2012.

In fact, there is a 30% chance of this.

Why?

Because he already has planted the seed of possibility that he will simply walk away and not risk a humiliating defeat.

Three times in recent interviews he has raised the possibility of “not running again” or, as he told Diane Sawyer this week, being a “good one-term President.”

Why would a new President already float the idea that he might just chuck it all?

Is it because he is scared of losing in 2012?

Or is it a ploy to look as if he is “above” politics?

Or is it something deeper? Is it that he is a diffident, emotionally distant man who does not really enjoy the rough and tumble of inside-the-Beltway politics?

Sure, he loved all the adulation as The One and The Messiah as he campaigned for President. But since his honeymoon ended last summer, he has had a rough “go”—what with his patriotism, brains, judgement, and citizenship questioned.

Both Barack and Michelle Obama—going all the way back to the 2007-2008 campaign—at times acted as if it was a step down for them to deign to run for the Oval Office. She once said in 2008, as things were getting rough with the Clintons, that this would be the “only time” the Obamas would go through this.

Now, in office, President Obama says, “It’s better to be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

Hmmmm… A “good one-term president” will get re-elected and thus have a chance to be something Obama never mentioned: a great two-term president.

So far Obama is not even a mediocre one-termer. He is on track to be a failed one-termer; another Jimmy Carter.

He does have time to turn things around. If the economy improves and if the unemployment rate drops substantially he can get re-elected.

He will—no matter what happens—be able to get re-nominated. An African American Democrat President can not be defeated for the 2012 Democratic nomination. Talk of a Hillary Clinton challenging Obama in the Democratic primaries is pie-in-the-sky. Ain’t gonna happen.

But what might happen is this: when 2012 begins and unemployment is at 9%, polling shows Obama in deep, deep political trouble. In polls he loses head-to-head match-ups to several Republican candidates. Democrats are panicked—especially after huge 2010 mid-term losses in the House and Senate. There is a sourness in the political system and among a nervous electorate.

In the midst of this, Obama surprises the nation by announcing that he will not run again; he says, “I want to devote this year to governing, not campaigning.”

It might happen.

A 30% chance it will happen.

LeBoutillier Can See Right Through Obama

Imus is planning to buy a new car, he told his guest John LeBoutillier, to help the struggling auto business. Yet he endured ridicule all morning from Bernard, Charles, and Lou because the car in question happens to be a $100,000-plus Mercedes.

“He’s doing his patriotic duty to help stimulate the economy,” said LeBoutillier, a former Congressman, displaying the full range of his ass-kissing capabilities.

During this time of national financial strain, LeBouillier was reminded of something his mother said: “It takes a rich person spending money for a poor person to have money.” But that sentiment has become unseemly in politics, because rich people are vilified.

“What makes the economy work is people spending money, hiring people, filtering down,” said LeBoutillier. “The Obama program is aimed at stifling that, and hurting the rich, and big business, and all business.”

The President announced yesterday that he wuld seek a 3-year spending freeze in domestic programs to pay down the national debt, which LeBoutillier called “total PR.”

“If he believed it, he should have done it the day he was inaugurated,” said LeBoutillier. “This is clearly a reaction to Scott Brown, and to the tea party movement in Massachusetts.”

Obama, he added, is struggling to right his administration’s path. He chalked Obama’s sudden populist tone up to his lagging poll numbers.

“Everything is seen through his eyes,” he said about the President. “That’s how he is and has been, and how most politicians are.”

LeBoutillier thinks Obama’s ignorance of how the economy works has exacerbated the country’s problems, but he credited the President with having one good idea.

“Breaking up big banks is the way to go,” he said, citing Theodore Roosevelt’s theory that “few people should not control all the money in the country.”

Though Obama ought to admit he made a terrible mistake by pursuing health care reform with such gusto, LeBoutillier does not think tomorrow night’s State of the Union address will include such a mea culpa.

“He’ll talk jobs, that’s their big thing,” said LeBoutillier. “As if talking about it is going to create it.”

And no, I-Man, there is no chance he will resign.

— Julie Kanfer

[Watch more video from John LeBoutillier’s 12/11 appearance on “Imus in the Morning.”]

John LeBoutillier will on “Imus in the Morning” tomorrow, Tuesday, January 26th, at 6:30 AM Eastern. Please listen on your local affiliate, or through www.imus.com.

Listen to John’s 12/11/09 appearance on “Imus in the Morning”:

OPINION: Mass. hysteria—New York GOP should welcome Tea Partiers
January 23, 2010 By JOHN LeBOUTILLIER

This week’s stunner in Massachusetts holds a lesson for the New York GOP. Sen.-elect Scott Brown, though running on the Republican ticket, never mentioned his party in his standard campaign speech.

Instead, he campaigned as an independent and a proud member of the Tea Party movement. He knew that the palpable anger of voters is directed against both major political parties.

The New York State Republican Party needs to embrace the Tea Partiers and the anti-establishment fervor of those who are furious with both the years of President George W. Bush’s massive deficit spending and President Barack Obama’s even greater federal spending.

The anti-establishment sentiment that took the Kennedy seat away from the Democrats in Massachusetts is woven from the same cloth as the rejection in New York of the Pataki-D’Amato years. Under Gov. George Pataki—with his patron, Sen. Al D’Amato, pulling behind-the-scene strings—Albany’s spending exploded as these so-called conservatives played interest-group politics. The result? Over three terms, voters grew increasingly fed up with Pataki. And that paved the way for Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Gov. David A. Paterson and soon, most likely, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. According to current polling, no Republican has a chance to win back the governorship.

Nassau County in 2001 provides another example of GOP fiscal mismanagement that caused independent and fiscally conservative Republican voters—with the same DNA as today’s Tea Partiers—to abandon the party and vote for a Democrat who preached fiscal responsibility.

This year, every office in New York State government, as well as both U.S. Senate seats, is up for election. Republicans ought to be able to win some—even all—of these seats. But it will not be enough merely to oppose the Democratic incumbents. To tap into the anger that elected Scott Brown, Republicans need to promise a strict fiscal discipline not seen when they last ruled Albany.

There’s hope that they are learning this lesson. This past November, the GOP won two county executive positions, in Nassau and Westchester, after its candidates campaigned on their counties’ disastrous fiscal situations and offered some specific plans for fixes.

If the Republicans are to win back the State Senate and have a shot at the governor’s mansion, they will have to address the state’s dismal fiscal picture with a specific plan that attacks all sacred cows equally. The Tea Party movement—independent fiscal voters furious over the cavalier way both parties have dampened our economy—will not accept typical political payback and parliamentary games in Albany.

The state Republicans have a new leader, Edward Cox, at their helm. This is the moment to turn away from past practices that squandered too many local and statewide offices. In November, we'll see if they finally get it.

Just a quick recap of the predicted-here victory in Massachusetts:

It was 5 points—I had predicted 4—but it was a huge rejection of Obama, Reid and Pelosi—and nationalized health care;

It is fitting it took place in the home of Paul Revere, who warned us, “The British are coming!” Scott Brown and his supporters were warning us, “The wrong kind of change was being shoved down our throats!”

This victory will radically affect DC: health care is not going to happen. And other left-wing proposals are going on the back burner.

One year to the day of President Obama’s Inauguration, the Obama Revolution is finished.

Obama is seen now as a combo of LBJ with all the dirty back-room deals, bribes and exemptions to pass his health care bill—after promising to “change the way DC does business”—and Jimmy Carter for his incompetence and naiveté.

Yes, the Democrat Establishment will try to blame Martha/Marcia Coakley for running a pathetic campaign, which she did. But this race was bigger than that: a total rejection of Obama’s Leftward Lurch.

Obama/Reid/Pelosi will now fight to keep what they have: Reid may lose his seat in November, Pelosi will now his the campaign trail to try to keep the Democratic majority; and President Obama will continue to flounder around with his political tin ear.

There is palpable anger out there. The GOP is not necessarily the vehicle to respond to it. The local Tea Parties—not an organized, national Tea Party—may be where the action is for a while.

The Republicans need to shed the losers who brought us to this point: McCain, the Bushes, Steele and the others who milk the party for their own greed.

This ongoing New American Revolution has just begun. It is a revolution against the establishment of both parties.

All incumbents of both parties better watch out.

Congratulations to us all! The American Spirit still lives!!!

Tuesday night, the GOP and the Tea Party will elect conservative Republican Scott Brown by four points over yet another stupid, dumb, out-of-touch, ignorant Democrat—Curt Schilling a Yankee fan?—to fill John F. and Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat, which had been in the hands of the Kennedys since 1952.

Ironically, the next day—Wednesday January 20—is the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration.

So, one year to the day of the arrival in DC of The One, he will effectively be a lame duck president. His Obama Revolution will be finished. The Democratic strangle-hold on DC power will be shattered. The upcoming November mid-term elections will be a Democratic blood bath.

Obama’s first year as been a case study is mis-reading why an election was won (the economy, stupid!), followed by another mis-reading of the public mood (jobs, jobs, jobs!) and then using the “never waste a good crisis” thinking to try to install Far Left, European-style socialism as the White House political and economic agenda.

Tuesday’s election will also be the final nail in the health care coffin—with Brown winning there will be 41 solid votes to filibuster the conference committee bill.

And with the eight months spent on health care thus a waste of time and political capital, Obama looks inept, incompetent and weak. Plus, his Sunday rescue trip to Boston will not rescue Coakley; it will cement the notion that he is ineffective, weak, a politician with nothing but celebrity status.

The Boston trip will be like the Copenhagen Olympic trip: he will—again—come home empty-handed. And thus his presidency will be forever weakened by his indiscriminate spending of White House political capital.

America is bouncing from one incompetent president—G.W. Bush—to another, Barack H. Obama.

How long can a great nation survive with the two parties producing such dunderheads?

In 2012 we better get our act in gear. Or else.

The failure of the Obama Administration to unite the nation—after his 2008 “change” campaign and all the hope it engendered—has caused the American political universe to spin out of control.

The first result of this ongoing chaos is the meteoric rise of the Tea Party as an alternative to both the GOP and the Democrats.

The energy, the anger, the sense of betrayal felt by millions of voters—many of whom voted for Obama after eight disastrous years of Bush-GOP rule—is all wrapped up inside these various iterations of Tea Parties and Tea Party events that occur all across the country.

One year ago there was no Tea Party. In fact, while the nation was gripped by a disastrous economic meltdown brought on by unfettered Wall Street greed, then President-Elect Obama had a united nation behind him. His ratings were sky-high. And everyone hoped for better days.

Instead we got the predictable, by-the-usual-book, left-wing, big-government, big-spending programs.

By April—Tax Day—many had already seen enough. Obama was—like Bush with Iraq after the unifying events of 9/11—re-polarizing the nation. Indeed, we are already back to an approximate 45-45, Red State-Blue State nation today.

It didn’t have to be this way. Obama could—and should—have driven right down the economic and political middle lane: some tax cuts to stimulate consumer spending, sometimes saying an emphatic “NO” to the Left for their spending programs. And, above all else, he should have talked “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” all the time - all year.

Had he done this he would be ahead of the curve today.

But he didn’t do this. Instead he talked about health care so much he talked it—and himself—down in the polls to the point that a majority of Americans now oppose it and him! And thus he is a failing president—now open to charges of not just being too liberal, but also being incompetent.

All the other screw-ups—like the Olympics-for-Chicago and the Professor Gates incident—are now a precursor for his inept, too-late-to-the-dance handling of the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber.

So poor has been Obama’s executive skills that he is rapidly making Jimmy Carter look competent.

The GOP has done nothing much since their two wipe-outs in 2006 and 2008 to resuscitate itself. Thus the rise of the Tea Party.

Prediction: 2010 will be a year filled with even more political chaos—somewhat like the late 1970’s. The Republicans will pick up a lot of House and Senate seats and Governorships in November because they are on the ballot—and the Tea Party is not. But the unraveling of our present two-party system has just begun.