Obama may be making two mistakes from over-confidence: not trying to reach out to Republicans in Congress, and leaving the crafting of major legislation to the Democratic barons. Look for a modest revival of the GOP in the next election.
If you take seriously the talking heads on the cable-news networks, you might believe that, less than four months into the Obama Presidency, the Obama agenda is rolling toward enactment and the Republican Party is in danger of dissolution. History would argue otherwise.
President Obama is enjoying public approval at about the level that previous Presidents have enjoyed at this early stage. Democrats have solid Senate and House majorities (with their Senate majority growing as Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter has changed parties and Al Franken is on the verge of certification as a Minnesota Senator). So soon after last fall's election, there is no single Republican leader who can serve as that party's rallying point. But it is far too soon to declare Obama and his program winners by technical knockout.
First, the matter of political mandate: Obama's victory in the 2008 Democratic nominating race was razor thin. His general-election victory over Sen. John McCain was solid but not as large as expected. The financial/economic crisis — hard economic times always favor Democrats — buried a McCain campaign that was still competitive at the time the recession struck. (A comparable foreign policy/national security crisis might well have elected McCain). Democrats had a huge financial advantage over Republicans and, down the stretch, were outspending Republicans 3 and 4-to-1 in major electoral states. The outgoing Bush administration was hugely unpopular. Yet Obama won the popular vote by only a bit more than 6 percentage points.
Obama's 2008 victory was nowhere near as large as those of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 or Lyndon Johnson in 1964, those to which it is most often compared. Democrats' Congressional majorities, likewise, are nowhere near as one-sided as those coming out of the 1932 and 1964 elections. In baseball terms, Obama's victory was 6-4 over the Republicans whereas the FDR and LBJ victories could be characterized as 10-1.
Why does this matter? Presidents with huge popular and strong Congressional majorities can operate with freer hands than those who must pay greater attention to minority opinion in the Congress and country. (Yet, in 1965, Johnson took extraordinary steps to generate Republican and business support for his Great Society programs). Obama's nominating and general-election campaigns stressed bipartisan cooperation and his desire to end polarizing gridlock in the capital, but as President Obama has talked bipartisanship but has governed in a one-party manner.
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