Getting Ready for the Next Election

Yesterday, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, reappointed his prime minister and re-arranged his cabinet in a bid to pull his government back toward the Gaullist right that is its natural base. The most startling and, in a sense, reassuring appointment was that of Alain Juppe to the position of Defense Minister.
Juppe is a former prime minister who got caught up in the questionable practices of the period when Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris and supposedly used "ghost" employees to fatten the coffers of his party, the RPR, also Gaullist. Mr. Chirac will stand trial on charges related to that affair, but Alain Juppe has already paid, being convicted and barred from office for 5 years. He went to Montreal and was a university professor during that period, and then came back to France and was elected mayor of Bordeaux, his stronghold in French Gaullist politics. Now, he's been tapped to regain the national stage as Defense Minister. He's a street-smart and intelligent politician who can only help Sarkozy's position.
I've always admired Alain Juppe and thought he "took the rap" for a lot of questionable practices that weren't really of his doing. Now that he's back, with his powerful position in French rightist politics, we can bet that Sarkozy is counting on Juppe to help cement Sarkozy's position with the "real" Gaullist right in France, in preparation for a second run for the French presidency in 2012.
Sarkozy has had a government that was a little bit of "something for everyone" with several ministers from the French left and center named to top positions in an effort to "open" French presidential politics to a broader group. This seemingly has failed, because to coin a phrase, "you can take the French leftists out of their party but you can't take their party out of French leftists." So, it seems Sarkozy's going home to his political  roots in order to be re-elected.
Does that sound at all familiar?
It reminds me of the 2008 presidential elections in the United States, when Obama won by staking out a blurry center left position and then, after winning, naming a White House staff full of what Americans call "extreme left" advisors. The results, as for Sarkozy, have been loss of popular support with the people who elected him, and and a desire for change that better suits their right-of-center political leanings.
If President Obama is smart enough to do what President Sarkozy has done  -  re-set his position by naming new advisors with a more centrist background, he may yet pull out the 2012 US presidential election. But, nothing is less sure.
The problem is that Sarkozy is a political creature, astute enough to understand why he was losing and to correct the errors he had made.
Will Obama have the savvy or political sense to do the same? The verdict is still out and every day he waits, the GOP is taking away more of his ability to find the centrist position he needs for victory in 2012.