Trump’s 2020 Spirit Animal: Truman
SO what if President Trump mixed up Kansas with Missouri in his post-Super Bowl congratulatory tweet about the Kansas City Chiefs? Starting with Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, Trump’s re-election campaign should bear a clear “Show-Me State” imprint from Missouri’s only president, Harry Truman.
People today tend to forget that Truman was widely viewed, like Trump, as coarse and unpresidential. His party also lost control of the House in his first midterm, and he faced serious intra-party criticism throughout much of his time in office. Truman was widely expected to lose the 1948 campaign to Republican nominee Thomas Dewey. Dewey’s bland moderation was a feature, not a bug, and was thought to be what the country wanted after years of strife and turmoil.
Truman turned all of these expectations and opinions on their ears by running an aggressive populist campaign. He ran on the Democratic Party’s record of lifting the economy out of the Depression since 1932. He attacked the Republicans who controlled Congress for doing nothing to combat high prices and a lack of housing. And, most telling, he pledged to call that Congress back into session in the summer to tackle these problems.
Calling that special session turned the tide of the campaign. Not wanting to give Truman a victory on the eve of a campaign they were sure they would win, Republicans passed only two small bills.
Truman spent the rest of the campaign lambasting what he called “the do-nothing Congress.” He cast the campaign as one between the “Republican reactionaries,” who backed special interests, and Democrats, who were for the people.
He tirelessly campaigned throughout the country in language so vociferous that at one rally a supporter shouted, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” — a line that went on to become the campaign’s unofficial motto.
The gambit worked. Sitting dead in the water with only a 36 percent approval rating in the summer, Truman won a crowded race with nearly 50 percent of the vote. Democrats gained, too, picking up 75 seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate, taking control of both chambers. It was one of the most stunning election turnarounds in US history.
Trump should emulate Truman in nearly every respect. His State of the Union Address should lay out his administration’s economic record: low unemployment and rising wages.
He should label the Democrats as socialist and castigate them for putting impeachment ahead of the nation’s priorities. He should lay out a clear agenda with bipartisan appeal: middle-class tax cuts, infrastructure spending, immigration reform without the Wall and reducing the cost of health care.
And like Truman, he should promise to keep Congress in session through the summer if it can’t pass bills to his liking. This comes with risk: Trump needs to send specific bills to Congress that aren’t just Republican boilerplate. He needs to line up the Republicancontrolled Senate and ensure it will back him up. House Democrats would be wise to pass their own versions of bills addressing these issues and claim it’s the president, not them, who is obstructionist. But the president holds a trump card in this fight: the Democrats’ ultimate platform.
The Democratic platform will endorse a collection of proposals that might thrill the party base but frighten moderates. Trump could call a special session and dare the Democrats to put those proposals into concrete bills before the election.
The party is deeply split on a host of issues and desperately wants to cover those splits over until it controls the White House. A special session focused on the Democrats’ platform, however, would force them to either confront those differences in the heat of an election campaign or adjourn after doing nothing. There’s that “do-nothing” Congress again — only this time, Trump can say it did “do” something: It impeached him rather than work with him to solve common problems.
Tacking to a more magnanimous approach might in theory bring the same benefits with fewer risks. But the president seems incapable of that. His pugnacious political persona is what got him here, and he isn’t going to change now — even though imitating Truman would ratchet up his natural tendencies to a new level and would leverage Democratic control of the House to his potential advantage.
Trump, like Truman, is never going to be the educated person’s cup of tea. But his earthy popular appeal is undeniable. Channel your inner Missourian, Mr. President. Give ’em hell!
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, is author of “The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.”