An uncertain fate awaits the Obama administration's ambitious policy agenda on Capitol Hill. Although lawmakers are predisposed to work with the new president on the nation's economic miseries, the experience of Presidents Carter and Clinton indicates that a party majority in Congress does not guarantee success for key legislative priorities.
Purveyors of conventional wisdom assert that Obama will fare better at the hands of legislators because he won more convincingly than his Democratic predecessors, has bipartisan instincts, and is a gifted orator. Nevertheless, many newcomers to the Oval Office with equally impressive credentials make early mistakes that hamper their effectiveness with Congress over the long run.
One common error that new presidents commit is assuming that their electoral mandate extends to Congress. Members have electoral concerns and time horizons that differ from those of the president, however. Despite Obama's healthy electoral margin, very few legislators owe their seats to his prowess as a fundraiser and grass roots organizer. Moreover, a majority of those elected in 2006 or 2008 hold office in formerly Republican districts or states. They require leeway to reconcile competing demands from their constituents and their party.
Democrats who served in the early Clinton years, no doubt, recall Republicans jeering "Bye-bye, Marjorie," as first-termer Marjorie Medvinsky (D, PA) cast the tie-breaking vote on the president's budget resolution. Others remember being "BTU-ed," which became shorthand for the electorally fatal support of Clinton's controversial energy tax in the House, which he subsequently abandoned in the Senate. Such early evidence of the president's seeming disregard for the conflicting political pressures on members made them wary of backing his subsequent proposals.
Second, presidents starting their first term see themselves as representing a fresh start on the nation's business, but they cannot escape the institutional dynamics put in motion by their predecessors. In the American system of checks and balances, as in physics, action produces reaction. Periods of burgeoning presidential power thus lead to periods of resurgence in Congress.
Obama assumes office in the wake of extraordinary claims of prerogative by the Bush administration. Lawmakers are smarting from years of treatment as an irksome "appendage," to use retiring senator, Chuck Hagel's term.
Attempts to reestablish the legislature as a co-equal branch may be similar to the response to Nixon's many abuses, resulting in a period of widespread reform inside Congress and aggressive oversight of the executive. The Carter years provide a telling example of the aftermath of an imperial president. In terms of bills passed, the 95th and 96th Congresses were highly productive, but Carter himself failed to secure key legislative priorities, such as control of pork-barrel spending or a serious energy policy. And though Carter largely kept his promise to exercise restraint, his administration received the most aggressive scrutiny in legislative hearings of any modern president.
The intense activity on Capitol Hill in revising the Treasury's bailout plan for the financial services industry, the public thrashing of CEO's from the auto industry, and the insistence on accountability for the expenditure of federal revenue to aid business are all signs of a newly energized legislature. Lawmakers took advantage of the power vacuum created by the change in administrations to reassert themselves, and it would be naive to assume that they will return to quiescence once Obama takes the oath of office.
Third, since Teddy Roosevelt coined the term "bully pulpit," presidents have exaggerated their ability to mobilize public pressure in order to move legislation on Capitol Hill. The White House dominates the news, to be sure, but it has limited ability to sustain media focus on its agenda or to change people's minds. Moreover, the decision to bypass Congress can be costly, denying presidents the expertise and institutional memory of legislative committees and the political cover of allies in the House and Senate.
Reagan's major successes on domestic policy -- tax cuts in 1981, social security reform in 1983, or sweeping changes to the tax code in 1986 -- were the result of skillful collaboration with committee chairs and party leaders not popular demand. In contrast, "the Great Communicator's" speeches to rally the public against congressional opponents of his policies in Nicaragua or El Salvador were ineffectual. Similarly, the Clintons' exclusion of Congress in developing their complicated health care plan resulted in a proposal now legendary for its incomprehensibility. Once opponents started exploiting its many avoidable shortcomings, the president was unable to stem the rapid decline in public approval for his plan, and he had no advocates on the Hill to back him up.
So far, Obama's key appointments have created the potential for a constructive partnership between the White House and Capitol Hill. In striking contrast to both Carter and Clinton, the president-elect has selected close advisors and Cabinet officials with firsthand knowledge of the procedures and personalities that govern policymaking.
The challenge will be engaging in the tough give and take between co-equal branches that the framers envisioned. Given the desire of the White House staff to maximize its own importance and the numerous pressures on the president to fulfill his campaign promises, the temptation for the Obama team will be to ignore the lessons of the past.
Perhaps this president will be different, not because of his heritage, his campaign innovations or his gifts as a speaker, but because he is a student of the Constitution. If Obama absorbed its lessons about the dynamics of institutional power, then he may avoid the mistakes of his predecessors.