Weird Fears about Obama's Second Term

Some conservatives greeted Obama's election with exaggerated rhetoric about all the harm he was about to inflict on America: disarmament, socialism, etc. Now that his term is 3/4 done, with no sign of any of those things, they have switched to arguing that he has been moderating his behavior as part of a plot to get a second term, but after his re-election he would show us his true self. Steve Chapman:

The critics seem to think that after this year, Obama will be free to liberate his inner radical and turn the United States into a more hellish version of North Korea. This scenario glosses over the president's cautious temperament and aversion to liberal crusading, which often cause Rachel Maddow to grind her teeth.

The doomsayers also assume that someone shrewd, unthreatening and adaptable enough to become the first black president would, at the age of 51, metamorphose into Huey Newton. It's about as plausible as Santorum undergoing a sex change or Newt Gingrich taking a vow of silence.

Every day, these alarmists wake up, go outside and look up in surprise to discover that, despite Obama's presence in the White House, the sky has not fallen. If he is re-elected, they will get 1,461 more surprises.

As Chapman points out, fears that Obama will come for people's guns are especially silly, since gun control is one issue in which he has never taken any interest. (The Brady Campaign gives him an F.)

Obama is a perfectly normal Democrat, in no way radical or outside the mainstream. His ideas are all old and well-considered, and many of them (cap and trade for carbon emissions, the individual mandate to buy health insurance) were pioneered by Republicans. The need to see him as a dangerous, anti-American figure is very strange to me, a product of anger over the world's refusal to be what conservatives want it to be.