It’s curious but he hasn’t even even assumed the mantle of office as yet and yet there are those already writing Barack Obama’s political obituary. Here is James Pethokoukis of US News & World Report suggesting that President Obama may be a one-termer:

Just “one and done” for Barack Obama’s presidency? Recall an ominous passage in his otherwise joyous election-night speech: “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term.” Maybe the tone was suggested by one of Obama’s economic advisers like Jason Furman or Austan Goolsbee. It’s the battered economy, after all, that will be President Obama’s greatest domestic policy challenge. As such, it will also be his greatest political challenge, too — but one where failure may already be baked into the cake.

That’s right, the “O” in “Obama” may stand for “One Term.” For starters, there’s a strong chance that when voters head to the polls on Nov. 2, 2010, they likely will still think the economy is awful. Not much debate about that. (Good chance the Democrats’ two-election winning streak comes to an end.) And while voters may be somewhat patient for two years, patient for four years? Really unlikely. If history is any guide at all, voters may still be terribly cranky about the economy when they cast their ballots on Nov. 6, 2012 and thus likely choose the 45th president of the United States — be it Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal or some other Republican without “Bush” for a last name. Once again a “change” election for an impatient America. The same bad economy that doomed John McCain in 2008 will have sunk Obama, as well.

Perhaps it will but I sense that with the GOP adrift and come 2012 in whatever shape we are in at that time, the argument will still be valid that the mess we find ourselves in is still largely the fault of the GOP’s Friedmanistic economic policies. Let’s also give the American electorate a little credit, they may be ideological naive but they are not stupid–they do realize that “trickle down” was “trickle up”. If the GOP returns with more of that same nonsense, it’s likely to find itself of the wrong side of history yet again. Moreover before writing Obama’s political obituary, might I suggest that he at least be allowed to govern if even only for a day.

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Oil today fell to a 20-month low to close at $58.70 despite recent moves by OPEC to curtail capacity. The downward slide is worrisome for it suggests that demand for oil is falling rapidly as the world economy contracts.

Lower energy prices are providing some welcome relief for struggling consumers, but a 59 percent decline in oil prices since their summer peak also shows how radically the prospects of the global economy have darkened in recent months.

At an emergency meeting last month, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to reduce their output, as of Nov. 1, to slow the price slide.

While there is no official tally of OPEC production, several members — including Algeria, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — have signaled in recent days that they had begun paring their production.

Various reports also suggested that Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s kingpin, had warned some Asian customers that it would pare exports by 5 percent next month.

So far, OPEC producers have announced cuts totaling about 1.1 million barrels a day, less than the 1.5 million barrels a day that the cartel agreed to last month. According to estimates by PFC Energy, a consulting firm, however, producers have actually trimmed their production by only about 800,000 barrels a day.

Despite these efforts, slower consumption has continued to weigh on oil markets, pushing prices down on Tuesday to their lowest level since March 2007.

But it’s not just oil that is on a steep downward slide. Copper has fallen from about $8,900 a metric ton in June to $3,800, while aluminum has slide from $3,000 a ton to $1,900. And such a steep drop in commodity prices brings up the specter of the “d-word.” Earlier this month, central banks across Europe slashed interest rates again. The Bank of England cut its policy rate to 3% from 4.5% – a cut three times as big as the market expected – while the European Central Bank trimmed its own rate by half a point, to 3.25%. The moves came a week after the Federal Reserve cut the Fed funds rate to 1%, touching the lows it set earlier this decade before the housing bubble took shape. The cuts are remarkable because it was only four months ago that the ECB was raising interest rates to stem inflation fears tied to the surging prices of energy and food.

The rate cuts are so severe that they suggest that the issue isn’t the absence of fear about inflation. Rather, it signals that global policy makers are worried that the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth stemming from the collapse of the housing and stock markets that will stem demand for goods of all sorts, creating the kind of falling price environment not seen here since the 1930s. In short, the economy is contracting faster than expected forcing prices down fast. (more…)

Officials at Royal Dutch Shell and the Iraqi Oil Ministry refute claims that a proposed gas joint venture would have exclusive access to Basra province’s gas industry, though a key member of Parliament criticizes the project.

“It is only a partnership,” said Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad. “There will not be a monopoly of the gas.”

United Press International first reported this week, with previously undisclosed documents, a deal signed in Baghdad Sept. 22. It was the preliminary step to forming a joint venture company.

The “Heads of Agreement,” basically a rough draft of the contract, a legal framework establishing the management team and the scope, purpose and other details of the company, says the company would operate for 25 years.

“We are at a very early stage,” said Shell spokeswoman Kirsten Smart. “This is a joint heads of agreement, a preliminary agreement which is then followed by discussions to formalize the joint venture.”

International oil company Shell has signed a $4bn deal to process natural gas at a plant in the Iraqi city of Basra. Mounir Bouaziz, Shell’s gas and power vice president for new business development for the Middle East, North Africa and the Levan, spoke to Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston about the deal.

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It’s likely that this in respect both a President Obama or a President McCain would have reversed the Bush Doctrine of American exceptionalism and its willingness to use force in a preemptive manner. Though it can be argued that each would have approached the reversal in different ways since I am not quite sure that Obama sees the world the way McCain did. Certainly, I welcome the return of the United States to a multi-lateralist approach to foreign policy.

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The debate is ranging across the country, if not the world. Was the 2008 US election a lurch to the left? On CNN on Election Night, former Education Secretary and conservative Bill Bennett bombastically declared that despite Obama’s triumph the United States remained a “center-right country.” With more nuance, former GOP Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan argued over on MSNBC that the election of Senator Obama as President did suggest a repudiation of Republican economic policies (that Buchanan often opposed anyway) but that gay-marriage votes in Florida, Arkansas, Arizona and above all in California meant the country was rejecting any resumption of the culture wars and Obama would do well to avoid a clash of cultures.

To this Joshua Holland over on Alternet fires back that “outside of a few social issues, Americans are firmly in the progressive camp” but curiously backtracking in his very first sentence:

The American people are center-left (or at least firmly in the center) on the primary matters over which government presides: taxation and debt, public services, the regulation of the economy and America’s role in the world.

Spare me. Americans by and large are non-ideological creatures. The Joe the Plumber debate was over raising the highest marginal tax rate 4.5% back to the level under President Clinton. For this, Obama was called a Socialist. Just imagine what would have happened if Obama had urged a return to the marginal tax rate under President Eisenhower. Throughout Ike’s Presidency, the top tax rate on income over $400,000 stood at 91%. Ike was such the Marxist apparently. And yet under Eisenhower the United States experienced a boom like few others. Ironically, it would be LBJ who cut taxes in 1964 which likely set off the rising deficits that would come to plague us in the 1970s.

I am simply not convinced that Americans, by and large, have an ideological world view that neatly fits in categories found elsewhere in the world. Fill their gas tanks at a reasonable price and I think you’ll find most Americans happily lost in search of vacuous pleasure adrift in a world of their own making. If Americans are ideological, then it’s only in the realm of social policies, not economic ones. It’s hard to generalize about a country of 300 million very diverse (and increasingly so) people but if you look at the exit polls a few things do jump out. Obama did 11 points better than John Kerry among Hispanics. Not insignificant. The other group that jumps at me is those who earn more $75,000 a year.

Barack Obama promised he would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans and presumably raise them for the 5 percent who benefited most under President Bush’s tax policies. But, remarkably, the most affluent 5 percent supported Obama and that was perhaps the key to his victory last week.

This group — and the rise of a new elite class of voters — is at the heart of the fast-paced changes in demographics affecting the political, sociological and economic landscape of the country. While there has been some inflation over the past 12 years, the exit poll demographics show that the fastest growing group of voters in America has been those making over $100,000 a year in income. In 1996, only 9 percent of the electorate said their family income was that high. Last week it had grown to 26 percent — more than one in four voters. And those making over $75,000 are up to 15 percent from 9 percent. Put another way, more than 40 percent of those voting earned over $75,000, making this the highest-income electorate in history.

The argument can be made that this was a 401K Election. (more…)