In today’s American Spectator, Peter Ferrara predicts that Barack Obama won’t even last a full term as president before he’ll have to resign:

Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn’t even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won’t even try to run for reelection.

I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership.

The whole thing is worth a read. Ferrara opens by calling the Joe Sestak affair an impeachable offense to which the White House has admitted by alleging that what was offered to Sestak through former president Bill Clinton was an unpaid commission appointment; Ferrara cites several sources to indicate that none of what the Obama administration has attempted to pawn off on the American people with regard to Sestak lets them off the hook, and he says it’s clear that Obama is engaged in a cover-up of the affair. Cover-ups are almost always worse than the crime, and the Sestak situation won’t be going away soon.

But he says the Sestak situation is nothing compared to what else could be headed Obama’s way.

Ferrara launches into a lengthy, but informative and largely persuasive dissertation on Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill, and it’s very damning. Perhaps the worst indictment in his presentation comes courtesy of Democrat talking head and Fox News contrarian Kirsten Powers, who notes that the 1994 EPA plan for waterborne oil spill was to burn the oil on site – a plan which not only wasn’t followed by the Obama regime but couldn’t have been, since the equipment necessary for an in situ burn had not been purchased – and instead of following its own playbook the administration offered up lots of talk about boots on necks. He then touches on the two most damaging aspects of the federal reaction to the spill – the disastrously slow approval of the sand berm plan and the assault on offshore oil – which have largely contributed to what he says is a coming desertion by Congressional Democrats. Ferrara says James Carville’s anti-Obama rants have paved the ground for Democrats to peel off, and he muses that if any evidence surfaces that Obama held up the sand berm plan out of some partisan political motive the president will become politically radioactive in short order.

Ferrara notes that the president has even worse problems on the horizon, as his disastrous tax and energy policies are likely to bring on an economic downturn of staggering proportions when their full effects begin to be felt next year. And the foreign policy wheels which have been set in motion by the grave errors this administration has already made will only contribute to a worsening of his standing.

He concludes that when this fall’s mid-term elections deliver a crushing blow to Democrat power in Congress, those survivors in Obama’s party will no longer tolerate his incompetence and out-of-the-mainstream politics. Ferrara thinks that Obama will be forced to step aside by his fellow Democrats, who will fear for the future of a broken party.

Whether these events come into play is a question. Certainly it’s difficult to see this president’s performance in a positive light to date, and his approval numbers are as abysmal as those of his policies. It’s difficult to see potential for a rebound when his foreign policy saps American prestige, his tax policies drain capital to foreign shores, his energy and other policies put Americans out of work and his governance in situations like the Gulf oil spill is feckless and possibly in bad faith. The president’s party is clearly in trouble; even despite the American people holding no particular favor for the GOP the Republicans hold the largest generic Congressional ballot edge since Gallup began polling the question. So the elements of Ferrara’s scenario are either in place or plausibly could be soon.

We tend to believe that rather than resignation Obama’s fate could well be losing a primary challenge in 2012. If Hillary Clinton were to resign as Secretary of State either before the November elections or shortly thereafter, it’s entirely possible she could be that primary challenger.

But in either case – Obama’s resignation or Clinton’s uprising – the GOP would likely be faced with a stronger opponent in 2012 than Obama looks to be. The country might be better off with someone else in the White House (though Joe Biden as the immediate successor inspires anything but confidence), but conservatives looking to reverse the orgy of spending and return some sense of American prestige and exceptionalism might actually end up rooting for the current president to hold on just long enough to be drummed out of office in the 2012 election.