Ross K. Baker: History Shows Congress Can Seal President's Fate
[Ross K. Baker is a political science professor at Rutgers University. He also is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.]
Most sessions of Congress are quite unremarkable, but this session — already amped up with President Obama's address to a joint session tonight — could be one for the record books. Several significant pieces of legislation await congressional action, and what transpires could become either the crowning achievements or the sad finales of the first year of the Obama administration.
Of the issues, including a climate change bill and immigration reform, none rises to the level of the importance of a national health care measure. Whether Obama and his Democratic-controlled Congress is successful in passing a health care bill will depend, history suggests, on some factors in the president's control — and some that are not.
Sometimes emergencies drive Congress into a flurry of activity, such as the session that resumed just a few days before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In the aftermath, anti-terror legislation was quickly packaged into the USA Patriot Act and passed, some would say hastily.
Certainly, Obama's stimulus package, budget legislation and the plans to rescue GM and Chrysler were enacted in an atmosphere of unusual urgency given the goad of a threatened financial meltdown. But the newly elected Obama also enjoyed the traditional willingness of Congress to go along, for a time, on a presidential honeymoon trip.
In some instances, the outcome of a session is pre-ordained. Lyndon Johnson, assuming the presidency after the assassination of John Kennedy, vowed to get Congress to pass a civil rights bill that eluded Kennedy. And when the 89th Congress convened on Jan. 4, 1965, voting rights legislation was at the top of the agenda. By August, the bill had withstood filibusters by segregationist senators to become the landmark piece of civil rights legislation.
In other instances, presidents can push Congress too far. In 1937, after Franklin D. Roosevelt had vanquished the GOP nominee Alfred Landon in 46 of the then-48 states to win a second term, FDR made his fateful move to increase the number of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
During his first term, the high court had ruled unconstitutional a number of New Deal programs. After his re-election, Roosevelt announced on Feb. 5 that he would seek to add an additional justice for every sitting judge older than 70. Besides a storm of predictable protest from Republicans, the Roosevelt plan also drew fire from lawyers' groups and from members of Congress in his own party. In this case, FDR misread his Democratic support, and Congress in turn handed him a stinging defeat.
Sometimes, though, developments are beyond the control of even a president. FDR's point man on the court expansion, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson, died suddenly in July 1937, leaving the president without his most effective congressional advocate.
In a similar manner, President Obama has suffered a loss of his key ally, Sen. Edward Kennedy, in his quest for national health insurance reform. So is Obama, like FDR, doomed to failure?..
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Most sessions of Congress are quite unremarkable, but this session — already amped up with President Obama's address to a joint session tonight — could be one for the record books. Several significant pieces of legislation await congressional action, and what transpires could become either the crowning achievements or the sad finales of the first year of the Obama administration.
Of the issues, including a climate change bill and immigration reform, none rises to the level of the importance of a national health care measure. Whether Obama and his Democratic-controlled Congress is successful in passing a health care bill will depend, history suggests, on some factors in the president's control — and some that are not.
Sometimes emergencies drive Congress into a flurry of activity, such as the session that resumed just a few days before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In the aftermath, anti-terror legislation was quickly packaged into the USA Patriot Act and passed, some would say hastily.
Certainly, Obama's stimulus package, budget legislation and the plans to rescue GM and Chrysler were enacted in an atmosphere of unusual urgency given the goad of a threatened financial meltdown. But the newly elected Obama also enjoyed the traditional willingness of Congress to go along, for a time, on a presidential honeymoon trip.
In some instances, the outcome of a session is pre-ordained. Lyndon Johnson, assuming the presidency after the assassination of John Kennedy, vowed to get Congress to pass a civil rights bill that eluded Kennedy. And when the 89th Congress convened on Jan. 4, 1965, voting rights legislation was at the top of the agenda. By August, the bill had withstood filibusters by segregationist senators to become the landmark piece of civil rights legislation.
In other instances, presidents can push Congress too far. In 1937, after Franklin D. Roosevelt had vanquished the GOP nominee Alfred Landon in 46 of the then-48 states to win a second term, FDR made his fateful move to increase the number of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
During his first term, the high court had ruled unconstitutional a number of New Deal programs. After his re-election, Roosevelt announced on Feb. 5 that he would seek to add an additional justice for every sitting judge older than 70. Besides a storm of predictable protest from Republicans, the Roosevelt plan also drew fire from lawyers' groups and from members of Congress in his own party. In this case, FDR misread his Democratic support, and Congress in turn handed him a stinging defeat.
Sometimes, though, developments are beyond the control of even a president. FDR's point man on the court expansion, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson, died suddenly in July 1937, leaving the president without his most effective congressional advocate.
In a similar manner, President Obama has suffered a loss of his key ally, Sen. Edward Kennedy, in his quest for national health insurance reform. So is Obama, like FDR, doomed to failure?..