Obama: Reprise Truman’s Summer Surprise?

05 July 2010 |permalink | email article

A major question facing the architects of President Obama’s 2008 victory is whether they are more focused on a 2012 repeat than dealing with the prospect of taking sizeable losses in the November midterm elections.

“I think the prospect of a Republican takeover – while not likely, but plausible – will be very much part of the dynamic of October, and I think that will help us with the turnout and some of the enthusiasm gap,” David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, told Washington Post political writer Dan Balz last week.

While taking control of the Senate may be more difficult, Balz noted that Democrats are likely to return in January with their majority greatly diminished. But independent projections show Republicans in the range of winning the 39 additional seats needed to regain power in the House.

This may be one reason the president, who plans to fund raise hard for the party this summer, slammed House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio for saying that the financial regulatory bill was like “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”

I thought Bob Shrum’s piece which first appeared at TheWeek.com cut to the heart of the problem confronting Democrats. In the 2000 Gore campaign the veteran Democratic strategist noted the special interest focus of Republicans, while Democrats were “fighting for the people, not the powerful.” Shrum said he was criticized for using that phrase in the campaign. “My only regret was that we didn’t push it harder.”

Referring to the midterms, Shrum’s view is that the Democrats and the President need something more than rallies, emails, fund raising appeals and television ads. That “something” would be a dramatic announcement by the president of a special August session of Congress which would dominate the news cycle and drive public opinion.

Obama would, as Harry Truman did when he recalled Congress in the summer of 1948, again challenge the Republicans to do “what they are saying they are for.” Truman won an improbable victory by pledging to “attack the citadel of greed.” He wanted the special session so voters could “decide on the record.”

Obama, Shrum opines, elected to change Washington, and could shatter a tenet of the old politics by telling Congress “that you don’t get a holiday until you’ve finished the job.” Are the president and his chief strategists courageous enough to change the music, and reprise “Give ‘em hell, Harry”?

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