From the Desk of Robert Levin:

We are lucky that Obama is smart and saavy, and we are lucky that he is already laying the foundation for a second term–because he knows he has only one year with two Democratic, and wildly so, branches of Congress. After one year, the House has to prepare for re-election, and if Obama’s daily note home from the boss (i.e. the Stock Market) is not good, then Congress will begin to hemorrhage Democrats. Obama has only one task in his first year, international crises aside. He has to get that number back up. He has to do it any way possible, and the market is not something you can intimidate or legislate to go up. Screw the tax cuts and the promises. Every day, just like the trickle of casualties in Iraq (among other things) eroded Bush’s political capital, a daily trickle of Dow Jones drops will strip the emperor of his aura. It’s that simple. Make the numbers go up.

Now, if you’ll please indulge me and forget everything you’ve learned in Political Science Class regarding definitions of systems, such as capitalism, socialism, fascism, communism, and whateverism–please ponder these definitions instead. Both socialism and capitalism attempt to solve problems. And as with all plans, they tend not to work the way we hope. It is at this point that we can differentiate socialism from capitalism. When the plan fails for a capitalist, the capitalist modifies the plan. But a socialist will figure that the plan was good as it stands, and will assume the problem is with reality. At this point disaster ensues ( for examples of this type of insanity, look no further than the State Department’s policy regarding the Middle East that morphed Yasser Arafat into a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.).

Obama doesn’t have the luxury of taking drastic steps to hold on to his plans come hell or high water. He has one year, as opposed to the State Department geniuses who are in for 30 years.

And like I said above, this is factoring out the building international crises. Because if there is just one terrorist attack on this soil, Congress also hemorrhages Democrats.

The Republicans simply have to have candidates ready to challenge the Democrats. The question, given the Republican failure rate, is whether or not they think that their plan for finding and promoting candidates is good, and reality is wrong, or do they change their plan and find people who are disciplined and flexible at the same time–like, oh, Iraq war vets. Or do they keep choosing party hacks to run for office?

Socialism, for this neocon, is actually a state of mind. In the future there will be medicine to address this.

Coming soon: Lessons Obama didn’t learn from George Bush’s Failed Policies