Deadlock! In Washington

It’s hard not to look into the past and compare the current administration with other major Democratic administrations, and there seem to be four camps that people are falling into with their Obama comparisons:  there are the Carter comparisons, the Clinton comparisons, the Johnson Comparisons and the Roosevelt comparisons.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the camps:

-Carter came into office after a disastrous Republican-presided 8 years as a Washington outsider with big plans for reform and humanitarianism.  He was portrayed as a do-nothing idealist and was basically sunk in foreign policy by the Middle East peace process and a resurgent Iran.

-Clinton came into office after a solid stomping against Bush 41, and immediately found trouble in Washington.  His health care bill was sunk and congress turned Republican in 1994, but he rallied in 1996 to annihilate Bob Dole and bring economic prosperity to the country.

-Johnson came into office pushing social reforms, focusing on welfare, poverty, and civil rights, but was bogged down in an unpopular war that he pushed to look tough on communism.  He was so disillusioned that he dropped out of the ‘68 race, essentially handing it to the Republicans, and died a few years later.

-Roosevelt came in on the heels of the depression, rallied the country with massive social reform using limited Keynesian economics, and then brought the country through a just war and into a new era.

Honestly, there are strikingly similar situations in all of these comparisons, with the Carter comparison being on the pessimistic side, and the Roosevelt being on the wildly optimistic side, but the main characteristic of what we’re seeing with Obama right now is that he’s having a bit of a rough first year – something that Bush didn’t have riding on the wake of 9/11 – and that he’s been attacked from all sides.

The populist movement that he started on the left has resulted in a populist movement on the right, and his foreign policy, though more or less successful in most areas so far, has come under criticism for being “do-nothing,” which I guess is what we call foreign policy that doesn’t involve shouting down our enemies in disastrous “Axis of Evil” speeches.  But I digress.

The question isn’t so much whether or not the Democrats are going to do well in the 2010 midterm elections – they’re not – as it is whether Obama can rally, like Clinton, or bomb, like Carter.  Frankly, I don’t know what my opinion is here.  I think the similarities between administrations lies closer to Clinton, but Carter’s an easy one to go after as well.  I just can’t decide which I want 8 years of less after Obama’s one or two terms:  another Reagan or another Bush?