Morning Jay: Four Historical Lessons for the Republican House

 As the debt limit battle drags on, my mind has gone back to the two previous instances in the postwar era when a Republican Congress was forced to square off against a Democratic president. The first was in 1947-1948, when Harry Truman was pitted against the 80^th Congress. The second was 1995-1996 when Bill Clinton battled the 104^th Congress.

Looking carefully at these two periods, I think there are four lessons that House Republicans need to bear in mind as we enter the final phase of negotiations on the debt ceiling.

1. Midterm mandates are provisional.

The title of this lesson is a bit misleading, as all mandates are provisional. A vast literature has been produced over the years about what elections can mean and do mean, but nobody has captured the truth better than E. E. Schattschneider, who once wrote:

The people are a sovereign whose vocabulary is limited to two words, 'Yes' and 'No.' This sovereign, moreover, can speak only when spoken to.

What this means for our context here is that election results do not necessarily mean anything, considering the limited role the public plays. Factor in relatively low levels of information on the part of voters, as well as the systematic efforts of both parties to obfuscate and misrepresent, and it is difficult – impossible, really – to conclude that the public elected any president or any Congress with a specific policy mandate.

Instead, the best approach to viewing elections is that of an opportunity to build a mandate over time. Policies and programs should be implemented with a view toward growing and sustaining popular support, with the hope that at the next election the public will give you a vote of confidence for what you have done.

This is where both the 80^th Congress and the 104^th Congress went astray. Both assumed incorrectly that their mandates were a signal of substantial sea changes in the body politic, and this misinterpretation induced the GOP in both instances to extend itself beyond the limits of public approval, ultimately giving the opposition an electoral advantage.

2. Beware of the bully pulpit.

The conventional wisdom about the 1948 election is that Harry Truman ran against the “Do-Nothing” Republican Congress. While this was a famous turn-of-phrase Truman used, his actual rhetorical approach was much more cunning. Consider this Truman speech from his 1948 whistlestop campaign in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania:

Just one fundamental issue in this election this time, and that is the people against the special interests. And when you vote at the polls on November 2, you will either vote for yourself or you will vote against yourself. Remember that.

I have been telling your neighbors over in Scranton what the Republican 80^th Congress has done to labor and what the Republican Party plans to do to labor, if it gets control of the 81^st Congress and puts a Republican president in the White House.

You know, I exercised my power of veto oftener than any other president of the United States in the time limit, except Grover Cleveland, and each of those vetoes I felt was in the public interest. Suppose I hadn’t been there! The 80^th Congress would have certainly fixed you sure enough, but they didn’t have a chance to do all the things they wanted to do. All you have to do to avoid a mistake like the 80^th Congress is to come out and vote on November 2.

Truman had a message like this for all sorts of factions throughout the country. He told farmers in the Midwest that the GOP had savaged farm subsidies. Out West he warned about GOP cuts in public works funding. He told African Americans that Republicans were just posturing in their support of a Fair Employment Practices Commission. And, of course, in the cities he did what he did in Wilkes-Barre: rail against the Taft-Hartley Act’s assault on organized labor.

Bill Clinton was able to pull off a similar rhetorical coup in 1995/1996. His strategy was essentially to embrace much of the Republican policy agenda (on crime, welfare reform, taxes, and a balanced budget) while simultaneously blasting the GOP as a bunch of extremists.