President Biden will come before Congress tomorrow evening to address the nation. He will stand in front of the least productive Congress in decades. A similar environment faced by President Truman as he prepared to run for President in his own right. Maybe Biden should follow the 1948 strategy of Truman and run against the “Do Nothing Congress.” It played a major part in his surprise election victory.
After the 1946 elections Truman found himself with a Republican controlled Congress. He previously benefited from a Democratic majority Roosevelt left behind. He was down in the polls with Gallup data on April 9, 1948, showing a favorable of 36% and unfavorable 50% and 14% not sure. The Republican Congress had rejected almost all his proposals for domestic reform. And it wasn’t yet clear that his foreign policy initiatives in Europe would succeed.
President Biden had success in working with the ll7th Congress despite Democrats slim majorities. After the 2022 election the 118th has been a different story. It’s not worth repeating how long it took for Republicans to find a Speaker of the House, and add to that the slim hold Democrats have in the Senate.
Like Truman, Biden remains confident of his victory…but don’t pass up the opportunity to label the 118th Congress the least functional ever, with only 34 bills passed since January of last year. The lowest number of bills passed in the first year of a congressional session since the Great Depression, according to congressional records.
“Everything old is new again.”