The President seeks Re-election

President Barack Obama has announced that he will seek re-election for the office of President of the United States. No surprise there, of course, and he has a couple big advantages over his Republican fellows which with he may make hay. He will face no primary opposition, a situation few incumbents face anyway, and incumbency itself means so very much. It's pretty easy to have your face in the news every day when you're already in the Oval Office.

That does not mean that his road will not be bumpy. His party and his political creed are relatively unpopular these days. Further, the President will need the twenty months or so which he's got in order to shore up a base which has itself soured on him. Elected largely on an anti-war platform (despite any pledge to ramp up the actions in Afghanistan) he has actually spread war. Libya is not going to go away soon, and that's something he cannot blame on his GOP counterparts. The gyrations he will be forced into in defending that course shall indeed be fascinating. It's always different when it's your army rather than the other guy's eh?

He said in announcing his candidacy that change takes time. This certainly true, especially when considering we have an American constitutional system which basically forces slow alterations to our structures and policies and an American people who resist drastic shifts to their thoughts and acts. Say what you will, Mr. Obama has definitely shown a willingness to push his views by any means necessary. If that's the definition of a leader, he qualifies.

Yet a true leader is more than that. A true leader knows the necessary from the optional, the constitutional from the illegal, the right from the wrong. The 2010 elections hold something of a lesson in how the American voters view such things. That in itself will likely be that biggest hurdle the President faces. Can he make them believe that he really knows what's best, what's right, for all of us?