For Obama, will it be Truman or Clinton?

[alp227]

by Dan Balz, Washington Post

In the weeks after his election two years ago, President Obama was often linked to two other presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Today, Democrats debate whether he should act more like Harry Truman or Bill Clinton to avoid becoming another Jimmy Carter.

Those early associations partly reflected the fact that Obama was coming to office at a time of great national problems, with an economy as weak as any since the Great Depression.

They were fed by Obama's habit of looking to Lincoln, a fellow Illinoisan, for inspiration - though he resisted direct comparisons - right down to the decision to follow the route of Lincoln's final train ride into the capital before his inauguration.

But the comparisons with two of America's greatest presidents also reflected the wildly inflated expectations that accompanied him into the Oval Office. After two difficult years, those are gone for now. Obama now has to fend off suggestions that, like Carter, he is in danger of being a one-term president.

But is it Truman or Clinton who provides the better alternative model? Both of those former Democratic presidents suffered major defeats in their first midterm elections. Truman's Democrats lost 55 House seats in 1946, while Clinton's party lost 54 House seats in 1994. Both came back to win two years later.

Democrats are divided over many things, including which president Obama should emulate as he decides how to respond to the thrashing he and his party suffered in last month's midterms.

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/04/AR2010120401980_pf.html

[Hawkowl]

1. Obama has to work up to Jimmy Carter

Carter had a backbone. He still does. People knew what Carter stood for, he just couldn't get the job done. People don't have a clue what Obama stands for except throwing money at Wall Street.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Two years ago it was Roosevelt or Hoover. n/t

[Axrendale]

3. One might be tempted to point out...

that Lincoln's Republican Party suffered horrific losses in the 1862 Midterms, that he was for the bulk of his presidency not exactly a popular figure, who was looked upon without any particular liking by either the conservatives (who loathed him as a "dangerous radical") or the liberals (who despised him as a weak and "cowardly sell-out"), his true base of support resting with the moderates, and that the scope of the 16th President's accomplishments while in office did not even begin to be really appreciated until after his death.

Since Lincoln also bounced back from the low-point of 1862, with his political base routed or faltering and his war initiatives having met with decidedly mixed success, to win a landslide reelection in 1864, with Union armies on the brink of victory, I would say that he remains a perfectly adequate model to follow.

It was firmly believed that Lincoln would be a one-term President as well.

The single glaring difference between Obama and Truman and Clinton, is that although the latter two went on to become authentically great (or at least good) Presidents, their first two years on the job were not exactly rife with success on the policy front. Obama by contrast has achieved a number of truly historic policy break-throughs in his first two years. He has achieved a legacy that already surpasses that of Clinton and Carter easily, and certainly rivals the best of a Truman or Eisenhower. The trick now will be to see him defend and expand upon it.