BACK TO THE 90s!:

Congressional Takeover by GOP Would Save, not Wreck, Obama Presidency (Michael Medved, September 23, 2009, Townhall)

Barack Obamas grandiose agenda offers the GOP a grand opportunity in the upcoming Congressional elections. Republicans shouldnt attack the President himself, who remains personally popular (according to all the polls) even while the voters disapprove of his policies. In any event, President Obama will retain the White House until 2013 and fulfill the term he was elected to serve, so the opposition and the public ought to make the most of it by providing President Obama with the balance and even keel that he desperately needs. The GOP should field candidates who promise to pull the president back to the center, back to the mainstream and who decry the ultra-liberal Pelosi-crats who have been dragging him to the extreme left. The nation will benefit, and Barack Obama will probably lead more effectively, when hes forced to cobble-together consensus with a revitalized opposition, rather than competing with his Democratic colleagues in Congress over who maintains the purest commitment to the doctrinaire liberal agenda.

Republicans can plausibly argue that a GOP comeback would help President Obama find a pragmatic, unifying path rather than continuing to pursue the shrill hyper-partisanship of a shallow hack like Harry Reid. If he continues with big Democratic majorities, he may go the way of over-reaching, imperious, ultimately discredited presidents like Lyndon Johnson or Jimmy Carter (whose 292 House seats gave him a veto-proof, two-thirds majority) or even, arguably, George W. Bush. If his supporters want President Obama to enjoy the consistent popularity of practical, deft, consistently popular chief executives like Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton, they should welcome a GOP takeover of one or both Houses of Congress in 2010.

A Republican comeback a year from now wouldnt destroy the Obama presidency and it may, in fact, promise the best hope for saving it.