Interesting insight from Ron Brownstein:
In a classic 1997 book called The Politics Presidents Make and a 2008 follow-up called Presidential Leadership in Political Time, [Yale University political scientist Stephen] Skowronek noted that the presidents who most successfully constructed lasting electoral majorities all followed presidents widely viewed as failures. These repeated couplings between “manifest incapacity and towering success” have included John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800; John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson in 1828; James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln in 1860; Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932; and, most recently, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980.
It would be interesting to look at presidents that followed perceived failures and did not build lasting electoral majorities. In the 20th-Century, that would be limited to Woodrow Wilson (to some degree) and Dwight Eisenhower. Wilson’s election (made possible by Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose third-party challenge) and presidency (marked by World War One) are too anomalous to be useful to Obama, but it might be fruitful to examine why Eisenhower’s presidency didn’t bequeath a lasting center-right majority. Or not. The challenges facing the nation in the 1950’s and its high degree of regional division are not particularly analogous to the situation we face today. In any case, it’s worth a discussion.
Perhaps Truman was seen as a failure but New Deal policies were not. Scowronek remarks:
The presidents who traditionally appear on lists of America’s most effective political leaders-Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and FDR-were, like Reagan, opposition leaders standing steadfast against already discredited political regimes. These were men of very different background, character, and political skill….What they shared was a moment in a political sequence in which presidential authority is at its most compelling, a moment when opponents stand indicted in the court of public opinion….”
Maybe people could see plainly that, while Eisenhower was reasonable, his party was not. Or, maybe Eisenhower didn’t try hard enough to discredit Truman’s policies.
Key to the success of the reconstructive or realigning presidents has been the ability to justify their direction and expand their support by indicting the failures of the old order. “The great communicators in presidential history all tend to be great repudiators,” Skowronek said in an interview. “The presidents who are the most successful in redefining the terms and conditions of legitimate national government, the ones who are most successful in setting a new course…are ones who have had this authority to repudiate.”
This, by the way, is exactly what Clintonism failed to do by either message or policy when it came to indicting Reaganism.
How about Obama?
Literally from the first moments of his presidency, Obama has repudiated Bush in unusually pointed terms. The process started in Obama’s inaugural address, when he declared, in an unmistakable reference to Bush’s security policies, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Obama was equally unsparing about Bush’s economic policies in his address to Congress last week: “A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.”
The White House took its indictment to a new level in the budget blueprint it released last Thursday. In a relentless 11 pages, the first chapter offers a withering point-by-point critique of Bush’s economic record and governing performance, from anemic job creation and income growth (the median income among working-age families fell by nearly $2,000 from 2000 through 2007) to rising poverty (up by 5.7 million from 2000 through 2007). It denounces Bush as overly secretive (“It is no coincidence that the policy failures of the past eight years have been accompanied by unprecedented Governmental secrecy”), incompetent, fiscally irresponsible, short-sighted, ideologically rigid (pursuing “a dogmatic deregulatory approach”) and favoring the rich over all others. The White House sums up the previous occupant’s record this way: “This is the legacy that we inherit–a legacy of mismanagement and misplaced priorities, of missed opportunities and of deep, structural problems ignored for too long.”
Other than that, what did you really think?
David Axelrod, Obama’s senior White House political adviser, said in an interview that the detailed critique and tough language was necessary to establish a “baseline” from which the public can assess Obama’s progress. “We inherited [federal] deficits over one trillion; the worst economy since World War II,” Axelrod said. “This is the canvass on which we have to paint, and I think it’s important to set that baseline.”
Even the Republicans have to paint on that canvass.