Challenges Facing Obama’s Re-Election

There are multitudes of complications that interplay in determining the result of Presidential election. For upcoming election involving Barack Obama, there are three concerns that will strongly influence whether he will have a shot in winning.

Health Care Bill Before Employment

President Obama's health care bill was met with a significant amount of controversy in the early part of his presidency. Looking back, it may have been something Obama personally wanted to achieve given how difficult it was in past (look at Clinton's failed attempt for example). But, this was his problem: personal issue.

What he should have anticipated was that new health care policy, even when approved, cannot and will not be going to solve the immediate problem in employments. Employment rate remained low along with economic struggles that hit the nation. Obama chose to do something "greater," hoping that his "health care bill" could somehow answer people's cries and make them forget about the economy. That obviously didn't work.

Lack of Communication with People

Every President is different by the way he behaves in White House. Each has a preferred location to catch on current news and read major briefings. With Barack Obama as the candidate prior to his presidency, one major criticism came from asking whether he, a rather young former Senator from Illinois, can handle complex politics in Washington. Then, they questioned about his capability to handle foreign policy.

Surprisingly, he did well on those areas (OK - he received Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, but that's not my only point), but with domestic matters, he was dramatically unsuccessful. It almost appeared that he cut off most communications to average American, and occupied himself in D.C. to somehow persuade Congressmen to agree with his plans. By the time he realized that wasn't going to happen, he then saw even his fervent supporters, like undergraduate students, were no longer enthusiastic as before. Why? Because unemployment and harsh job searching still persist.

Dysfunctional Congress as a Back-up Reason

The one way that President Obama can win is to constantly blame on dysfunctional congress as the main factor for his incapability to carry out many items in the agenda. Regardless of political parties, no one can argue that Congress is dysfunctional - this is the reality. The evidence came when John Boehner, the current Speaker of the House, could not make his own party to agree with his plan. Most people now see that as much as they do not like the current President's inability to act and solve problems, they cannot entirely feel confident about Republicans, whose time was spent more on philosophically engaging in ways to improve the country without laying out specifics (or if they saw the specifics, they simply picked a reason to condemn it).

But, there is still a limit to how much Congress can be blamed. In the end, inaction by President really falls down to President, whose inability to compromise (or lead successful compromise) questions his success in the future. Excluding constant calling out to both parties to think about American people and repeating himself, he is still stuck on helping two parties to work together. In fact, the growing crisis in Europe is probably more dramatic incentive than President's calls to the leaders in each party.