What's good for Republicans is bad for the country

Politics is full of contradiction. For example, for Obama to have a successful presidency almost certainly requires Republicans taking control of the House in 2010, or at least coming very close to evenly splitting it.

Similarly, if Obama continues to be the epic failure he has been thus far, making Republicans taking back the White House in 2012 likely, it will be disastrous for the country at an extremely dangerous point in history, as Victor Davis Hanson explains:

I am not a fan of the Obama agenda. But I am don’t want an impotent Commander in Chief abroad for three very dangerous years to come. So I am worried that the U.S. will be crippled with a weak, unpopular executive, as happened to Bush (35% approvals) in 2007-8. Our currency is tanking. Our debts are climbing. Our energy needs are breaking us. Our borrowing is out of control. The country is divided in a 1859/1968 mode. And the world is smiling as Obama, now hesitant and without the old messianic confidence, presides over our accepted inevitable decline. The country needs to buck up and meet these challenges head on, since the world smells blood, whether in Iran, Russia, the Mideast, North Korea, or South America, and in a mere 9 months of the reset button.

I think this is exactly right. No matter how misguided Obama's domestic agenda is to you (and to me it's incredibly foolish), we badly need him to find some wisdom and intestinal fortitude in foreign affairs. This is not an era when kicking the can down the road for four years can be overcome.