Wonderboy's First Term Millstones

William McGurn wrote a thought-provoking piece in his weekly Wall Street Journal column on Tuesday of last week. In it, he drew a sharp contrast to Wonderboy's potential for a second term, and that of Slick Willie's.

A key passage early in his editorial was,

"That story is this: Democrats remain in charge for the next few weeks, they have some big decisions to make and, at least for now, Mr. Boehner's relations with Mr. Obama are of far less moment than the president's relations with his own party."

The remaining Democratic liberals in Congress, McGurn points out, are about to make Wonderboy's situation worse,

"To try to get these through in a lame-duck session risks solidifying one of the chief indictments against Mr. Obama and his allies in Congress. That is their arrogance in riding roughshod over public opinion and standard legislative procedure in Congress to get what they wanted."

Amazingly, as McGurn opines, the remaining Congressional liberals, and their allies, worry that Wonderboy will ape Slick Willie, run to the center, and moderate their desired agenda in order to gain re-election.

However, he notes,

"They may not have to worry. Because Mr. Clinton's health-care plan was defeated, he could walk away from it in 1994 and start afresh. In theory, Mr. Obama might likewise move to the right and use Democratic liberals as a foil to his pragmatism. In practice, it would be hard to do while defending his health-care initiative.

In other words, there is a story well worth covering: an intramural Democratic fight about the way forward. In this fight, Mr. Boehner is a side story."

McGurn makes a very cogent point. Wonderboy can't escape the voter outrage at the health care law. So triangulation is impossible for him, without essentially repudiating his own self-proclaimed greatest legislative achievement.

Perhaps conservatives have reason already to rejoice over the 2012 presidential election.