Perhaps not as conservative as might have been expected from a Republican president addressing a Republican Congress, the message nevertheless was much farther to the right than would have been anti-cipated if the Democrats had been returned to power.The Balti-more Sun, Page 1, Jan. 7, 1947.
June 7, 1995
Bill Clinton, meet Harry Truman. Forty-seven years ago, President Truman delivered the first Demo-cratic State of the Union speech to a Republican Congress in over a quarter-century. He was, as Presi-dent Clinton was last Tuesday, con-ciliatory and dropped several pet programs from the agenda he had pushed the previous two years to a Democratic Congress.
Then, as now, the congressional response to the president’s speech was mostly partisan. Unlike last week, the applause in 1947 did not seem to those who reported on it to be orchestrated. We believe the reac-tion to Clinton’s State of the Union speech was unprecedented. It often appeared that the two men seated be-hind the president were performing as competing directors.
Cue the Democrats, Al! Loud ap-plause and cheers on the left side of the aisle. Cue the Republicans, Newt! Loud applause and cheers on the right side of the aisle. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, we thought, was particularly Cecil B. DeMille-ish. Of course, he had more and more spirited extras than Vice President Al Gore.
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Even if the Democrats had wanted to play such a game in 1947, they could not have. Both men seated behind Truman when he delivered his State of the Union speech were Republicans. There was no vice president. (Truman ascended to the presidency from the vice presidency in 1945, when President Roosevelt died. Under those circumstances, the president pro tem of the Senate joined the speaker of the House as presiding officers of Congress when a president addressed it. In 1947, both men were Republicans.)
Truman and the Republican Con-gress in 1947 started off with the appearance of cooperation. The presi-dent praised it (and it was a pretty distinguished body, including three future presidents). But before long, it had become in his speeches the good-for-nothing, do-nothing 80th Congress and the worst Congress in history. He ran for re-election on that theme.
Clinton, the first Democratic presi-dent since then to face a Republican-controlled Congress, probably likes to look back to Truman’s perform-ance and maybe forward to a revi-val. Given up for politically dead, Truman was re-elected in 1948.
This editorial appeared in Sunday’s edition of the Baltimore Sun.
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