For Bush, Hope and Fear in Lessons of Midterms Past
IT was 1946. President Harry S. Truman was having a bad year. Never able to fill the shoes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he endured ridicule in the press for his rough manners and political blunders. There were new economic worries: 10 million returning servicemen seeking jobs and homes; shortages of meat, coffee and tires; some 4.5 million autoworkers, steelworkers and others on strike. Republicans began to charge Democrats with having coddled Communists. Truman’s approval ratings barely cleared 30 percent.
The year ended in a blowout at the polls. Republicans picked up 55 House and 13 Senate seats and took control of both houses. Richard M. Nixon and Joseph R. McCarthy suited up and headed for Washington. Senator J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, urged Truman to name a Republican as Secretary of State and then resign, so the new appointee could become president (as succession rules then dictated). Truman scoffed, belittling the senator as “Halfbright.” Prospects for his liberal agenda were shattered, while bills like the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakened labor unions, came on the docket.
President Bush is having a bad year, too. And like Truman in 1946, he has cause to worry about the coming midterm elections.
The party occupying the White House almost always loses seats in midterms. One theory political scientists give to explain this tendency is called “surge and decline.” It notes that most presidents have coattails when they are elected, carrying the party’s candidates into Congress. But in other years those legislators have to run without the presidential surge, and many lose.
Read entire article at David Greenberg in the NYT
The year ended in a blowout at the polls. Republicans picked up 55 House and 13 Senate seats and took control of both houses. Richard M. Nixon and Joseph R. McCarthy suited up and headed for Washington. Senator J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, urged Truman to name a Republican as Secretary of State and then resign, so the new appointee could become president (as succession rules then dictated). Truman scoffed, belittling the senator as “Halfbright.” Prospects for his liberal agenda were shattered, while bills like the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakened labor unions, came on the docket.
President Bush is having a bad year, too. And like Truman in 1946, he has cause to worry about the coming midterm elections.
The party occupying the White House almost always loses seats in midterms. One theory political scientists give to explain this tendency is called “surge and decline.” It notes that most presidents have coattails when they are elected, carrying the party’s candidates into Congress. But in other years those legislators have to run without the presidential surge, and many lose.