In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, self-elected political experts are rushing to proclaim, “President Obama is now guaranteed to win again in 2012!”

A word of caution: not so fast.

In 1945, less than six months after he led Great Britain out of the darkest days in her history to defeat Nazi Germany, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was himself defeated at the polls.

More recently, in 1991 President George H.W. Bush defeated Sadaam Hussein’s forces in Kuwait and drove them back into Iraq. By May of 1991 President Bush had a record-high 91% approval rating. Yet 18 months later, Mr. Bush received a mere 37% of the vote in losing to Bill Clinton (and Ross Perot).

So anyone who thinks this wonderful, long-awaited killing of Osama bin Laden guarantees President Obama’s re-election 18 months from now is just plain mistaken and short-sighted.

However, here is a simple, two-point plan that would almost guarantee Obama’s re-election:

1) Use this long-awaited killing of Osama bin Laden as the point of demarcation for the U.S. to end its occupation of Afghanistan. The President could announce, in effect, “We have succeeded in our first mission–to capture or kill Osama bin Laden–and we will leave behind a skeleton force to guarantee our second mission–that Afghanistan will not become the launching pad for more attacks on the United States.”

The President could then order a drawdown of 90,000 troops and leave 5,000-10,000 either in Afghanistan or in the theater to monitor future terrorist activities in Afghanistan.

As for the effect of this withdrawal on the future of Pakistan, their obvious complicity in hiding Bin Laden disqualifies them as an American ally worthy of our help and protection.

In other words, to Hell with them.

2) Obama’s other action which would virtually guarantee his re-election is to make The Grand Bargain–the deal with the Republicans and Tea party Congressmen to cut the National Debt and deficits by changing Pentagon, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending in a fundamental way.

If he did this, the financial markets would rejoice and foreign investors would flock to the US. The reaction would be positive–that the US has finally addressed its long-term budget problems.

Declaring victory in Afghanistan and withdrawing most of our forces and seriously implementing a debt reduction program would leave the GOP almost nowhere to run in 2012. The key voting bloc–independents–would go for Obama in a big, big way.

Only one caveat: if the economy goes back in the tank, then Obama would still have trouble in 2012. Barring that, he’d be heavily favored.

Let’s hope he doesn’t read this column.

“Imus in the Morning” producer Julie Kanfer summarized Friday’s interview this way:



Just Because He Went To Harvard Doesn’t Mean He’s Any Better Than Imus

Former Congressman John LeBoutillier had an interesting assortment of songs today, from Linda Ronstadt to The Beach Boys. One of his songs, The Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes” somewhat appropriately stirs up memories of when LeBoutillier met President Richard Nixon in California.

“It was one of the big moments of my life up to that time, to meet President Nixon in his office,” said LeBoutillier, then a business student at Harvard. “I had an hour with him and Ray Price, his speechwriter. It began a good relationship I had with President Nixon all through the 80s and into the 90s.”

Imus agreed Nixon might have been one of the best President’s ever, save for the fact that he was crazy. A President we're hoping is slightly less insane accepted the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, and LeBoutilier called the whole thing “unfortunate.”

“I can’t give the guy any grief for it, except that it’s absurd,” he said of Obama getting the prize and having done almost nothing to deserve it. His acceptance speech, however, was more believable than the one he gave last week announcing he’d send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, LeBoutillier added.

“He’s struggling to say, ‘I’m a man of peace while I’m waging a war,’” he said.

LeBoutillier believes Obama should tell the Afghan and Pakistani people, “Bring us Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, dead or alive, I don't care. Bring them to us, and we will pack up and be gone in 60 days.”

The President’s message on the war in Afghanistan has been totally misconstrued, neglecting to even mention Bin Laden. It's all the more indication, at least to Imus, that Obama has little idea what he’s doing.

“He’s been learning this year how to be an executive, and I’m not sure he’s really learned that much because he’s made a lot of mistakes,” said LeBoutillier, who then asked “Bigfoot” to show on television a chart indicating Obama’s slipping approval numbers.

“You can’t go to Harvard College and Harvard Business School and then refer to the executive producer of the program like I do,” Imus told his guest.

Obama’s numbers have suffered because he has “lurched all over the place,” said LeBoutililer, who offered his rationale for why Obama seems, at times, aloof.

“His mother was an anthropologist,” said LeBoutillier. “Obama is a big brain, he’s well-educated in an intellectual sense but his comment… that people ‘cling to their guns and their religion’ was almost like an anthropologist studying a strange species.”

Good politicians, he added, can feel what people care about. “I’m not sure he really does,” said LeBoutillier.

— 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, Friday, December 11th, 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”:
Imus in the Morning 12 11 09 by bootsblasts

The following Memo to the President was emailed to him at 10:00am this morning:

MEMO

TO: THE HONORABLE. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
FR: FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEBOUTILLIER
RE: CHANGE YOUR SPEECH TONIGHT AT WEST POINT - NOW

Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 10:00 AM


Mr. President, I urge you—before you depart this afternoon for West Point—to scrap your speech and the troop escalation the Pentagon and CIA have pressured you to adopt.

Instead, what you should do—to the overwhelming applause of the Left, Center and Right here in the USA—and the Afghan people, too—is to announce a simple and stunning new American strategy tonight:

“Bring to any American forces stationed in Afghanistan both Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri—dead or alive—and we will then pack up and leave Afghanistan within 60 days.”

That plan, Mr. President, would solve multiple problems:

1) It would decapitate Al Qaeda and end its ability to threaten us;

2) It would give a definitive purpose to our seemingly never-ending mission in Afghanistan;

3) It encourages the Afghan people—and maybe some Pakistanis, as well—to help us so that we will leave them alone; they will suddenly decide to stop protecting these two mass-murderers and instead grab them or give them up to us;

4) Politically, here at home, you will be applauded by all sides—instead of being called Bush III.

Do this tonight, Mr. President, at West Point, in front of those wonderful young cadets and you will once again represent hope and change.

However, if you proceed with the Surge that White House officials say you are to announce tonight, Afghanistan will bedevil you for the rest of your presidency.

Have the courage to scrap the speech already written—and announce this bold and simple plan: give us Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri and we’ll leave for good within 60 days.

Sincerely,
John LeBoutillier

Even though he was a United States Congressman in the early 1980s, has written several books, and is a pundit for Newsmax.com, John LeBoutillier was nobody until he began appearing with Imus last year.

Despite being a Republican, LeBoutillier not completely off the rails. Today, he shared his not-so-insane views on how the President ought to spend his political capital. First up: get Osama Bin Laden.

"Eight years and one month after this bastard hit this country, he continues to taunt us with videotapes and audiotapes, and for some odd reason this country allows it," said LeBoutillier. "What happened to the America that used to say, 'You're going to hit us? We're going to come back and get you!'"

That policy is eerily similar to the one employed by Imus in the Morning. LeBoutillier insisted it would unify Americans.

"I don't want our soldiers over there building schools in Afghanistan, interdicting the drug trade, running the government," he said. "It's all corrupt there, it's not going to change."

Killing Bin Laden, he added, would avenge 9/11, and significantly weaken Al-Qaeda, both strategically and psychologically. But instead of focusing on that goal, Obama is wasting his time and his political capital trying to pass health care reform, which LeBoutillier said is inextricably linked to Afghanistan.

"If he decides to put 30,000 more soldiers in Afghanistan, it's going to tick off the Left," he said. "And he'll also tick them off by dumping the public option."

Imus observed that Obama is a better-looking, more charming version of Jimmy Carter, which LeBoutillier did not dispute. He admonished Obama for dwelling on issues like the dispute between a Cambridge police officer and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates back in July, and on trying to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.

"Fix the economy, get jobs—that's what people want," said LeBoutillier. "Instead all they hear is 'health care, health care, health care,' and the more they hear it, his ratings are going down, down, down."

A Harvard alumnus, LeBoutillier said it was the overarching liberalism and hypocrisy there that made him become a Conservative in the 1970s. As an example, he said his professors and fellow students would preach about the redistribution of wealth, and then hop in their Mercedes to drive into Boston for lunch.

Said Imus, "Works for me."

President Obama—and the entire country—are struggling over Afghanistan.

No one can decide exactly just what our mission is—or should be.

So here is what we—as a nation—should do:

The President calls into the Oval Office the Joint Chiefs, the Head of National Intelligence and the Director of Central Intelligence, the SecDef and Generals Petreus and McChrystal.

They all sit down and the President gives them their mission: “Gentlemen, here is what we are going to do: we are going to devote every dollar, every soldier, every intelligence asset, every drop of political capital—EVERYTHING—on getting and killing Osama Bin Laden. Period. Nothing else matters. If we have to go into Pakistan to get him, do it! We are in there secretly anyway.

“This was why we went to Afghanistan originally—and the American people want to know why—after eight years—we have failed to do what we said we would do.

“So, we are going to get him. This single action will decapitate Al Qaeda and render it a weakened, disorganized entity that will then no longer be a threat to us. There is no other leader who can rally that disparate group of killers. And we are not going to stand for a man who murdered almost 3000 people to taunt us in audio and video tapes—more than eight years after the 9/11 attacks.

“And then we are going to pack up and leave. We are not there to build schools or to stop their narcotics trade or to buck up an inherently corrupt society and a thoroughly crooked regime.

“We are not the world’s policeman. And we can’t afford to try to build another country when our own in in such disarray.

“If any of you cannot accept this new mission, then please say so now—and resign. We will find other officers who will embrace this policy.

“We seek justice for the murders of 9/11. And we will get it.

“And, if in two months we haven’t gotten Bin Laden, I may very well make changes in our senior military and intelligence leadership and keep making changes until this mass murderer is brought to justice.”

If the President said that—and meant it instead of paying lip service to this mission—then we would succeed. That is the mission Americans can unite behind.

————

At the same time the White House has declared war on Fox—with more passion than their commitment to get Bin Laden. This anti-Fox diatribe is a stupid political maneuver. Sure, the liberal “base” hates Fox, but Obama has those voters anyway.

Why not, if you are Obama and his surrogates, go on Fox as much as possible and try to woo and schmooze and seduce as much of that audience as possible?

Supposedly Obama believes he can win over anyone he talks to. That is why he wants to talk to Iran and Hugo Chavez and the North Koreans. But he won’t talk to the Americans who watch Fox?

Something is wrong here.

Obama has a thin skin, which is evidence that he was “given” the Presidency without really earning it. The same applied to G.W. Bush—who was a legacy all his life, cashing in on having the same name as his father.

Candidates who get high office the old fashioned way—they earn it—are not going to turn down air time and a chance to convince voters to vote for them!

Team Obama will rue the day they declared war on Fox.