Do Nothing

When President Harry Truman decided to run for re-election in 1948, there wasn’t a whole lot of enthusiasm.

He had been a compromise vice-presidential pick at the previous Democratic convention, an afterthought who was only thrust into the presidency when FDR died in April 1945. The new president started out with a lot of goodwill and fairly strong support, thanks to the Allied victory in World War II, but just a year later, his approval rating had sunk into the low 30s.

The reaction against him was so pronounced that Republicans managed to retake both houses of Congress in the 1946 midterms, the first time they controlled the House and Senate since the onset of the Depression. Truman soon emerged as the butt of countless jokes like “To err is Truman.” 

Things were so bad, in fact, that shortly after the election Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas proposed that Truman should consult with the Republicans, appoint a person of their choosing as his new secretary of state, and then resign. Because he had no vice president at the time, according to the rules of succession then in place, that Republican would then become the new president. Needless to say, Truman didn’t like the idea. From then on, he only referred to Senator Fulbright as “Senator Half-Bright.”

By the time the 1948 campaign was underway, Truman was under attack from both the left and right wings of his party.

A major “Stop Truman” campaign began in the top ranks of the Democratic Party, a revolt against an incumbent president that was almost unprecedented. But they had trouble finding “someone else.” Some disaffected Democrats, including two of FDR’s own sons, advocated that the party draft General Dwight D. Eisenhower to be their new leader.  Others called for liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to be the nominee. In the end, though, both Eisenhower and Douglas refused to be drafted.

Therefore, at the Democratic National Convention in July 1948, the liberals found themselves with no one to support.  Grudgingly, they fell in behind the president and his new vice presidential nominee, Senator Alban Barkley of Kentucky. However, they made it clear that they weren’t excited.  Riffing on the popular song “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” they wore campaign buttons that admitted “I’m Just Mild About Harry.”

With Truman confirmed as the nominee, the party split into three parts — some on the left lined up behind Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party while many on the right rallied to Strom Thurmond’s States Rights’ Democratic Party (the Dixiecrats).

Faced with a fractured party and his own unpopularity, Truman decided to target the Republicans — not their mild-mannered presidential nominee, New York Governor Tom Dewey, but the much more polarizing Republican Congress.

At the convention, Truman electrified delegates by announcing that he was calling a special session of Congress to pass items on his Fair Deal agenda (many of which Republicans said they agreed with). When Congress failed to do much of anything, he finally had his target for the campaign trail — the “Do Nothing 80th Congress.”

While Americans remember Truman’s energetic “whistlestop campaign,” they should also remember what he said on the trail. Here’s a fairly good example, a speech he gave in Elizabeth, New Jersey, attacking the “Know Nothing, Do Nothing Congress”

Some people say I ought not to talk so much about the Republican 80th "do-nothing" Congress in this campaign. 

I will tell you why I will talk about it.  If two-thirds of the people stay at home again on election day as they did in 1946, and if we get another Republican Congress like the 80th Congress, it will be controlled by the same men who controlled that 80th Congress--the Tabers and the Tafts, the Martins and the Hallecks--would be the bosses.  The same men would be the bosses, the same as those who passed the Taft-Hartley Act, and passed the rich man's tax bill, and took Social Security away from a million workers. 

Do you want that kind of administration? I don't believe you do--I don't believe you do. 

I don't believe you would be out here, interested in listening to my outline of what the Republicans are trying to do to you, if you intended to put them back in there. 

When a bunch of Republican reactionaries are in control of the Congress, then the people get reactionary laws.  The only way you can get the kind of government you need is by going to the polls and voting the straight Democratic ticket on November 2.  Then you will get a Democratic Congress, and I will get a Congress that will work with me.  Then we will get good housing at prices we can afford to pay; and repeal of that vicious Taft-Hartley Act; and more Social Security coverage; and prices that will be fair to everybody; and we can go on and keep sixty-one million people at work; we can have an income of more than $217 billion, and that income will be distributed so that the farmer, the workingman, the white collar worker, and the businessman get their fair share of that income. 

That is what I stand for. 

That is what the Democratic party stands for. 

Vote for that, and you will be safe. 

Now, in truth, the 80th Congress actually did quite a lot! It had authorized the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine, as well as the National Security Act (which effectively reorganized the military and created the CIA, among other things). Even if we write off those foreign policy accomplishments, the conservative Congress succeeded in passing some major items on its longterm agenda, like the anti-union Taft Hartley Act and the constitutional amendment that limited presidents to two terms (a clear swipe at FDR). They “did nothing” on Truman’s domestic agenda, but they did plenty of the things they wanted to do. That’s something!

In sharp contrast, the current Republican House has really done virtually nothing at all.

Yes, there are two chambers in Congress, but the dysfunction in this Congress is pretty clearly located in the ranks of House Republicans who can’t even keep a Speaker in office. It’s a perpetual clown show of performative assholery and awful performance. (Just last night, they failed to push through a bullshit impeachment effort against the DHS secretary and failed to pass an aid bill for Israel.)

Biden has spent a good bit of time denouncing Trump, and with good cause. But he should take a lesson from Truman here — rather than make the election a comparison of two individual candidates, make it a contrast between two broad parties and their very different policies.

Draw the attention not to yourself, but to the voters who will be affected by the significant changes in policy.

Make yourself the pitchman for the entire Democratic Party.

Don’t run against a Republican, run against them all.