Obama is no 'lame duck' president

Obama is no 'lame duck' president Almost as surprising as Barack Obama's election as the nation's first African American president is his success in not becoming a lame duck president, a term normally applied to a politically weakened outgoing president's last two years in office. Few presidents have been as lame as George W. Bush, who was largely dismissed in his last two years in office and so unpopular that Republicans did not want him to show up at the last Republican national convention of his tenure for fear of harming the GOP's chances of winning the White House in 2008. Bush, acting as though he was in the federal witness protection program, didn't appear, but that did not alter the outcome of the election. Given the GOP's extreme hostility toward Obama – with the open declaration by now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-Kentucky] that his sole objective was to make Obama a one-term president – many expected Obama to be impotent as he limps out of office next year.