If Obama should lose this election, many will say it was because the economy was weak and because the president is black. Actually, it will be because he fought it as a failed progressive rather than a successful centrist.

[snip]

Every voter who chose Obama in 2008 still wants him to succeed. But not all are convinced he can, and that’s partly because he has stopped trying to be the president he said he’d be. The need to fix Washington, the need for a bridge-building, post-partisan presidency was uppermost in centrist voters’ minds when they elected Obama, and he’d made that the core of his campaign. Washington is still broken – more so than before – and Obama is no longer even trying to mend it… The president’s error wasn’t that he refused to compromise. It was that he compromised so reluctantly, denying himself ownership of his own policies and making every accomplishment seem like a defeat.

Clive Crook Obama’s Blunder Was in Ceding Political Center to Romney

I’ll take that understatement and raise you one fact: Obama never tried to be the president he said he’d be.