Eleanor Clift: President Obama Weighs Harry Truman Strategy for 2012 Reelection Campaign
Eleanor Clift is a contributing editor for Newsweek.
The supercommittee was always a contrived solution to a contrived crisis, and President Obama was smart politically to stay away from it.
The current morass is not like August, Obama pointed out, when a congressional impasse took the country to the brink of default. Congress has a year to shape the cuts that will otherwise kick in automatically, and polls suggest that voters are receptive to the president’s argument that Republicans are standing in the way of policies that could help jump-start the economy and create jobs.
Much of Obama’s success will depend on his ability to frame the election-year debate in a way that keeps the moral high ground as he punches away at the “do-nothing” Congress. Harry Truman saved his presidency in 1948 by running against a Republican Congress with as much fervor as he did his GOP opponent. Truman said if you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat, a sentiment Obama is attempting to apply to today’s Congress....