Obama's 0-4 on Foreign Policy

If I were a Republican Party leader, and I didn't care a whit about the welfare of the United States (and no, those two descriptors are not synonymous), I'd be feeling pretty good right now. My party will almost certainly pick up a lot of seats in Congress come November, which is the normal mid-term pattern after a big swing the other way, and this shift will make it even easier for the GOP to obstruct future Obama initiatives. More importantly, I'd be increasingly confident about regaining the White House in 2012 too.

One big reason is the economy, of course. Although Obama's economic team did a good job of arresting the financial meltdown and recession that began under President Bush, they aren't getting much credit for this in the minds of American voters. Voters don't care about the disasters-that-might-have-been-but-weren't; they care about how things are going now. There is a wealth of political science research showing that voters' perceptions of the economy have an enormous impact on presidential elections, and a recent book by Professor Larry Bartels of Princeton suggests that income growth in election years is a powerful predictor of incumbent electoral success.