Tonight, the most recent two-term Democratic president will address the party’s convention to make the case for Barack Obama’s re-election.  If everything works out, Obama will face a second term that will resemble Bill Clinton’s, where the President faced a powerful opposition party determined to undermine him.

Obama seems unprepared for this.  He told The Associated Press that his re-election victory will “pop the blister” of Republican obstructionism: “…what I'm offering the American people is a balanced approach that the majority agrees with, including a lot of Republicans. And for me to be able to say to the Republicans, the election is over; you no longer need to be focused on trying to beat me, what you need to be focused on and what you should have been focused on from the start is how do we advance the American economy — I'm prepared to make a whole range of compromises, some of which I get criticized from the Democratic Party on, in order to make progress. But we're going to need compromise on your side as well.”

Clinton has a reputation as a great compromiser who, even under the hottest political fire, collaborated with Republicans to reform the nation’s welfare system.  Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich were able to work together despite being locked into a struggle that nearly ended Clinton’s presidency and ultimately cost Gingrich his speakership and stature within the party.

In his second term, Obama will face matters far more existentially pressing than welfare reform.  Unless the two parties can agree to a new budget, current legislation would raise tax rates while bluntly cutting spending at the same time, costing the country, by some estimates, more than 5 percentage points of GDP.  The Treasury’s authority to borrow new money will also have to be renewed.  In 2011, taking that fight to the wire cost the U.S. its AAA credit rating from Standard and Poor’s.  S&P’s analysts were aghast at how badly the government functioned.  A repeat of that can only lead to further downgrades by S&P and other agencies like Fitch and Moody’s.

Even after two years of Republican intransigence, Obama is betting that his opponents will ease up in his second term and that they will choose cooperation over economic calamity.  There’s no evidence for this.  Indeed, National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru, in a Bloomberg op-ed argues that Republicans will simply dig in their heels if Mitt Romney loses.  Republican faithful will blame Romney’s moderate temperament for the loss while taking solace in control of the House and any gains the party might make in the Senate.

We’ve seen this before.  In 1992, Republicans blamed President George H.W. Bush’s loss to Clinton on the president’s decision to raise taxes in the face of conservative opposition.  In 1996, Senator Robert Dole ran against Clinton and when he lost conservative critics blamed it on his being a “squish,” a term that has since evolved into RINO.  Voters who think this way also believe that Obama was beatable in 2008, had only a more reliable conservative than John McCain been nominated to run against him.

With an enraged base and control of at least The House, Republicans will not be pressured into compromise.  Obama is perilously (and stupefyingly) ignoring the history of Republican opposition since 1992. Clinton’s opponents loudly and consistently attacked his legitimacy to hold office.

Clinton’s opponents characterized him as a vile real estate swindler and philanderer married to an ambitious Lady Macbeth who murdered the Deputy White House Counsel and made it look like a suicide.  Later on, the Clintons would be accused of smuggling narcotics from Latin America to Arkansas. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr started investigating Clinton’s real estate investments from the 70s and 80s just two years into the President’s first term.  That investigation was invasive enough to lead to the revelation of Clinton’s affair with an intern, in which the President was evasive enough to get himself impeached.  This weakened Al Gore’s candidacy in 2000, allowing his rival George W. Bush to run resonantly to “restore honor and dignity to the White House,” which is, even in these cynical times, still something that people care about.

Obama doesn’t have the specific vulnerabilities of Clinton, but the Birther movement in his first term is analogous to the 90s claims of Clintonian skullduggery that dominated right wing magazines and talk radio.  It’s not the substance of the Birther argument that matters – it’s the absolute hatred and unwillingness to accept Obama’s presidency that it represents.  This is the enthusiastic, even euphoric, opposition that Clinton faced.  It’s apparently too impolite a thing to say, but a loud enough segment of the Republican base enjoys being angry enough that state level politicians can cater to them while national advocacy groups can put them to work.

If Obama wins, he cannot conduct himself like he did in his first term, trying right off the bat to meet Republicans half way, as he did with health care (a Republican-designed plan) the stimulus (largely tax cuts over spending) and the budget (he has so far extended the Bush tax rates for all brackets, as Republicans have insisted).

Obama needs a warrior’s mindset for his second term.  If he wants to get anything done before 2016, he should spend his first two years trying to make sure that his party wins the House and Senate in the midterms.  Because, in the end, there’s really no dealing with those people.  Not if you’re Obama.  Just ask Clinton.