The most revealing crossfire came late in the campaign when the President pleaded, "If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We're gonna punish our enemies, and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us' — if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election — then I think it's going to be harder." On election eve, Republican House leader, now Speaker-elect, John Boehner fired back: "Mr President, there's a word for people who have the audacity to speak up in defence of freedom, the Constitution and the values of limited government that made our country great. We don't call them ‘enemies'. We call them ‘patriots'." Hours before Boehner spoke, but after his prepared remarks were released to the media, Obama agreed he "probably" should not have used the word "enemies", hardly an upbeat campaign closing for a President. Despite Obama's last-minute retreat, this exchange of rhetorical salvoes may well foreshadow two difficult years ahead.

The other big 2010 political story was the Tea Party phenomenon and its long-range implications. The Tea Party's central focus, as its name implies, is reducing government taxation, spending and Federal control over the economy. It is truly a grassroots outpouring, not a structured, hierarchical monolith, calling to mind Will Rogers's famous quip: "I am not a member of any organised party — I am a Democrat." Many observers still do not comprehend what moves ordinary, middle-class Americans to become so vociferous. On November 1, for example, a Financial Times reporter referred in the first sentence of a "news" story to "the ultraconservative Tea Party movement". But, in fact, its growth is best understood simply as a precisely inverse reaction to Obama. In implementing the famous insight "Never let a serious crisis go to waste", he tried to jam 50-plus years of left-wing frustration through Congress under cover of responding to the 2008 economic crash. He succeeded in part and failed in part, so Tea Partiers will now focus on blocking further government expansion, while simultaneously seeking to roll back changes, such as in healthcare, Obama was able to make. 

What happens for Tea Party backers in foreign and national security policy is less clear. Too many observers simply assume that self-styled Tea Party adherents will advocate massive cuts in defence spending and reducing the American presence overseas. If accurate, this would make the Tea Party little different from the Democrats' left wing, which refused to acknowledge even Afghanistan as a "good war", let alone support Bush's decision to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein. But it is entirely consistent with conservative libertarianism to believe in both smaller government and strong national defence. The slogan "peace through strength" sustained the Right throughout the Cold War and Barry Goldwater's foreign policy manifesto was entitled "Why Not Victory?" rather than "Why Not Isolationism?" Tea Party followers are unambiguous about the UN and the secular religion of multilateralism. Across the movement, there is nary a glimmer of support for entrusting more clout to multilateral bodies, let alone anything even vaguely resembling a reduction of US sovereignty. There is, therefore, scant reason to see the Tea Party joining the Left to support a smaller US global role. 

Now that 2010's voters have spoken, what will Obama, the first post-American President, do in the next two years? Are they his final two, as he heads towards a Jimmy Carter-like place in history? Or, in 2012, can he "do a Clinton" and win another term? Obama's choice between alternative paradigms is entirely in his hands. In one, he tracks Clinton's post-1994 approach, and moves to the centre. Clinton invented "triangulation", positioning himself between Republican congressional majorities on one hand and congressional Democrats on the other. By being (or at least appearing to be) both centrist and somewhat above the battle, Clinton successfully won re-election in 1996. Call this the pragmatic approach. By contrast, the ideological approach would see Obama continuing to pursue his initial leftist agenda: Europeanising the US health-care system, dramatically increasing Federal taxing and spending, expanding government regulation and control and pursuing priorities not yet enacted, such as further economic restructuring under the guise of protecting against "climate change". One certainty is that Obama will defend his early victories. Having spilled so much Democratic blood, it is inconceivable he will agree to dismantle, say, his own healthcare reform.