Our recent history tells us we’ve soured on our presidents by the time they’ve reached their seventh years in office. In fact, each of the five lame-duck, two-term presidents — Democrat and Republican — barred from running again (since 1951) has had a Congress of the opposite party to deal with.
So when it’s reported today that much of what President Barack Obama proposed in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address fell on deaf ears or has no chance of becoming law, it’s just par for the course. Right?
Well, not necessarily.
Although Obama has the second worst record of any president in the last 50 years of getting his State of the Union proposals enacted, according to the Washington Times, presidents don’t always fall flat with their late-in-the-term policy requests.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told The Daily Beast he has seen little interest from the president in engaging with Republicans about compromise legislation. Things were a lot different in the 1980s when he was a Capitol Hill staffer, he said. At that time, President Ronald Reagan and congressional leaders exchanged different proposals in a more collegial manner, Thune said.