@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
Splitting the executive and the legislative between the two parties is an old tradition with the American electorate. It cannot necessarily be taken to be an indicator of future electoral success. In 1954, the voters gave the Republican President Eisenhower a Democratic Congress to wok with. Eisenhower was re-elected in 1956. In 1994, the voters gave the Democratic President Clinton a Republican Congress to work with. Clinton was re-elected in 1996.
This is true of course. The biggest landslide victories in the House since WW2 were 1994; 1958, when the Dems made massive gains; 1974, when they did the same; and 1946, when the GOP won tons. After the landslide defeat in '94, the Dem prez still got re-elected easily two years later; two years after the big GOP gains ni '46, Truman still got re-elected, if narrowly; and two years after the big GOP defeat in '58, they did also lose the presidency, true, but only by a hairwidth. '74-'76 is the only exception, where massive mid-term gains heralded an easy oppositional victory in the next presidentials too.
But whom do voters blame when times are bad? And whom do they reward when times are good? If one party holds the Presidency and the other party holds one or both chambers of Congress, which side attracts the ire or the sympathy when economic good times or bad times hit?
I don't know, this is just from the top of my head, but
- When the crisis erupted in 2008, at least judging on how they voted in the election that year, voters blamed President Bush more than the Dems who held a majority in Congress;
- When economic times grew sharply worse in 1991/1992, the voters punished the Republican President, not the Democratic Congress.
- When the recession hit in 1981/1982, President Reagan's GOP lost seats, while the Dems, which held Congress, won seats.
Now I've got to peek, but yeah - turns out - during and immediately after
the recession of 1958/1959, in the
elections of 1958 and 1960, the voters also punished Eisenhower's Republicans (by voting in lots more Dem Representatives in '58 and electing Kennedy in '60), not the Dems who were controlling Congress.
I dunno. The recession of 1953-1954 also came at a time of split power, but didnt seem to have much of an effect either way, and any impact of the recession of 74-75 would I guess be dwarfed by Watergate. So it's not a uniform pattern. Plus, that's just the economy: just because it's the President's party that apparently tends to get punished for economic bad times, rather than the opposing party holding one or both houses of Congress, doesnt mean that it works the same way for other bad news. (I'd guess it would only be more true with a foreign policy crisis though, since that more the President's purview anyway.)
Of course, hopefully the next two years will not see a worsening of the economic news at all, but an improvement. I'm still afraid of a double dip recession, but who knows, maybe things will start looking up quickly. And if my theory of the voters punishing or rewarding the President's party, rather than the party holding a majority in Congress, in cases where the two are opposed, holds true, than any economic rebound should be good news for the Dems, since they'd still get to reap the rewards.
I'm a lot more sceptical than you guys (I'm addressing Cyclo and Set, I guess) about how much can be done to influence the electoral mood by the President and the Dems in terms of playing up how the Republicans are obstructing. Highlighting all the shenanigans the GOP might get up to in these two years, etc. People just don't care. No matter how outrageous this or that move of theirs will seem to us (lemme specify that: us, politically engaged, left-of-center A2Kers) - short of an attempt to impeach Obama, it will just be too deep into the weeds. If anything, a lot of people will just shrug that eh, a bit of gridlock's good anyway - like some of you have been doing in this thread already. So in that sense the Prez will be pretty much hostage to the GOP's obstruction, I think, I don't think he holds a lot of name-and-shame type of leverage.
