Robert Kuttner considers what Barack Obama can learn from Harry Truman‘s inspired use of partisanship:
When President Barack Obama took office, at a time of grave financial crisis and disgraced laissez-faire economics, many of us hoped that he would be the next Franklin D. Roosevelt. That hope, to put it mildly, has not materialized. In fairness to Obama, he took office while the crisis was still deepening. FDR, by contrast, was inaugurated after the depression had festered and Republicans had dithered for more than three years, creating a popular mandate for more drastic change.
But if Obama is not destined to be the next Roosevelt, he can choose from one of two very different presidential role models, Harry Truman or Bill Clinton. When Clinton lost his congressional majority in the 1994 midterm elections, he moved emphatically to the center. He saved his own presidency by positioning himself almost as a president above party — the famed strategy of “triangulation.” But he did a lot of damage to Democrats along the way, suggesting that they were somehow too left-wing for the country.