So what does President Obama do now? Modern presidential history suggests at least three plans of action for a president faced with an opposition House and Senate.
1. When the Republicans took Congress in 1994, for the first time in almost a half century, Bill Clinton, facing re-election, searched for ways to cooperate with Republicans on domestic policy, such as an overhaul of welfare and the quest for a balanced budget. Such a strategy may be harder for President Obama, because the next Congress will feature more conservative firebrands than did Bob Dole’s Senate and Newt Gingrich’s House of Representatives.
2. After losing the Senate in 1986, which gave the entire Congress to the Democrats, Ronald Reagan worked with the opposition to achieve arms control and other foreign policy measures that helped to end the Cold War. This was made easier by the fact that Reagan’s optimism about working with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was probably shared by more Democrats than Republicans (some of whom referred to the president as a “useful idiot” exploited by the Kremlin.) To some extent, Reagan was following the 1947 playbook of Harry Truman. After losing Congress to the Republicans, Truman worked with the other party to enact the foundation stones of his containment policy against the Soviet Union, such as the Marshall Plan and aid to Greece and Turkey. President Obama may be able to establish a similar community of interest with some Republicans on certain world issues in the next two years.
3. Responding to increased Democratic control of Congress after the 1974 midterms (fueled, in part, by public outrage over the Watergate scandals), Gerald Ford, hoping to win a full term in the White House, decided to make frequent use of his veto power. He vetoed more bills during the 94th Congress than any other president during any other two-year period we have seen during the past half century. Ford’s veto record is all the more surprising, in retrospect, because as House Republican leader, he was known for his willingness to compromise with Democratic presidents. The reason he became so combative was that advisers told him that frequent vetoes would suggest to conservatives in his party that he was not as moderate as they thought, and show Americans that he had grit and spine. They also persuaded him that such a veto strategy would convey to the voters that the Democratic bills Ford vetoed must have been awfully “extreme” if they had moved the mild-mannered Ford to stand up to them. Ford hoped that this would position him well for re-election in 1976, encouraging Americans to give him their support as the best way of holding back a “radical” Democratic Congress. The Democratic nominee of 2016, whoever she or he is, might want President Obama to adopt the Ford veto strategy for the same reason: It would give the party’s nominee the opportunity to argue that in 2017, only a Democratic president can hold back the excesses of a Republican-controlled House and Senate.
