Would Barack Obama be a stronger president if he announced today that he will not run for re-election in 2012? Democratic strategists Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen say the answer is yes.

“If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it,” Caddell and Schoen write in Sunday’s Washington Post. “But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.”