Those who underestimate President Obama do so at their own peril. Again and again, Obama has proven that he is a force to reckon with.

Never in my lifetime have I seen the politics of America this vicious. The opposition is not just interested in defeating the president come 2012, they are interested in destroying him come tomorrow. The good news is that Obama is built to resist their hits.

During the summer, the opposition cranked up the volume of their vitriol. They exacerbated about the danger of reforming the American healthcare system. It was tagged the final straw that would bring an end to the America we know. At one point it looked as if the America was going to descend into a civil war over Obamacare.

Obama remained calm. He took the beating. And when they were done, when football season began and the tea party goers head for the sofa, Obama returned. Now a public option, once considered dead-on-arrival, is going to be in the final bill to be voted for in Congress. And the heavens have not fallen.

The American political landscape is distorted. Those Nixon once called the silent majority have not been this silent. The noisy minority confuses the silence of the majority as proof of their extinction. The 3 million people who watch FOX news every day somehow think they are America. They lost sight of the other 60 million Americans who watch the rest of the 1001 TV channels in the US.

Consequently, a whole lot of people are losing it, including a once decent guy like Thomas Sowell and David Brooks. The commentators are rushing for hyperboles to explain their hyperventilation. They are not just throwing the sink and the kitchen table, they are chasing their shadows around. It is a pathetic caricature.

The conspiracies are multiplying. They always do when we confront an extraordinary thing that does not fit our preconceived notion of reality.

As a result, the wing nuts are everywhere advertizing their wares. They are chipping away at Obama’s credibility. But they are also digging the graveyard of the Republican Party members who silently nod in approval. The wing nuts do not just define Obama, they also define the parameters of anyone who can authentically be an alternative.

For voters who are looking for an alternative to Obama, they are weighing all possible candidates against the picture of the reality that Dick Cheney and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are painting. It is not going to be a Mitt Romney. It is not going to be a John McCain. Instead, it is going to be someone on the fringe because it is only those on the fringe that are called to the fringe.

But no matter how screwed up America is, America knows the fringe when it see it.