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History Could Repeat Itself In 2008

July 21, 2008 — Will 2008 become 1948 in reverse this year?

Political pundits are beginning to wonder. It has all the makings.

Look at what the polls are telling us.

Public support for Congress has plummeted to all-time lows.

Only 9 percent of Americans give Congress a good or excellent rating, the lowest approval rating in the history of Rasmussen Reports tracking polls.

Fifty-two percent in those surveys say Congress is doing a poor job, tying the record high for this dubious distinction.

Only 13 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of Republicans give Congress an excellent or good rating.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are giving Republicans an opportunity to run against a “do-nothing” Congress, says Charles Dunn, a political scientist at Regents University in Virginia Beach.

It was a successful strategy used by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, allowing him to pull off one of the greatest upsets in the history of American presidential campaigns, Dunn said.

Dunn raised the question. What if Republicans, copying Truman’s brilliant strategy in 1948, decide to put before the Congress a set of initiatives that a Democratically controlled Congress would refuse to act upon?

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama not only faces the possibility of looking like the over-confident Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate from New York, but also the possibility of John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, looking like Truman, Dunn said.

To date, McCain’s campaign has gained little, if any, traction, a situation that alarms South Carolina Republicans.

With the state’s huge black population energized and excited about the prospects of seeing the nation’s first African-American elected president, they look for Obama to make a big push in the Palmetto State.

S.C. Republicans acknowledge their candidate doesn’t measure up. They are visibly worried.

McCain’s poor speaking skill and lack of charisma, like Truman, have not captured the imagination of the American voter.

Ho-hum is usually the reaction to McCain’s stump speeches and media interviews.

Rusty DePass, a Republican activist and long-time party office holder, says McCain needs to quit being nice to all these groups and go for the jugular.

“McCain’s a mean person,” he said.

He ought to be himself, DePass suggested. He didn’t get where he is today by being Mr. Nice Guy.

In 1948, the handsome, suave and debonair Dewey led Truman on almost all counts, so much so that the Gallup Poll stopped polling several days before the election.

Dewey became over confident. Some say arrogant against the non-charismatic Truman, who was not a good public speaker.

But Truman’s 1948 strategy of choosing to run against a “do-nothing” Congress, one of the most brilliant stratagems in presidential campaign history, changed the political landscape.

The winner – Harry S. Truman.