By the same token, where Speaker Gingrich was liberated, President
George W. Bush was trapped by his legislative party leaders into a spending
spiral that dispirited his party base and limited his policy options. His loss
of party control of the Congress resulted, perhaps counter-intuitively, in a
more sure-footed Presidency. He was freer to proceed with the highly successful
surge in Iraq and to respond with greater flexibility to the financial crisis
when it hit. One can only speculate whether he could have had more success in
reigning in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other excesses of the housing crisis if
he could have "taken off the gloves", as it were, against the Congress earlier.
It is sometimes said that at the end of the day, the two national parties are not the Republican and Democrat, but rather the White House Party and the Congressional Party. As noted above, they were in fact supposed to compete as well as collaborate. But when they are controlled by the same party, the dynamics seem to bring out the worst in both--collaborating either to overspend or to paralyze. Bush 43 was able to achieve a tax cut and No Child Left Behind before the bad behavior began, but not much thereafter.
His father, by contrast, was faced with a solidly Democrat controlled Congress and yet still managed a rich record of legislative accomplishment--the ADA, Clean Air Act, the Civil Rights Act of l990, the first important energy bill that initiated integration of the power grid, and last but not least, the S&L reform legislation that cleaned up the banks and help set the table for the great economic growth of the l990s and beyond--a clean-up that Japan could never accomplish for its own banks, with more than a decade of stagnation as a result.
Speaker Pelosi will demand her due, and Obama will have to provide some deference for party, though not necessarily for political or policy reasons. Better to have a Republican Speaker and full throated competition for the best ideas and to force inter-party cooperation. This may be a fantasy presently, but I am betting it may be one Obama will dream about from time to time. The pressures he will face will come from the more extreme elements of the House--such as Charlie Rangel, who wants to take wealth directly from the successful and Henry Waxman, who is a near radica hoping to unseat John Dingell as Chairman of the House Commerce Committee, the most powerful panel in Congress. They will both push Pelosi to punitive extremes, and Pelosi will in turn push Obama. The new Chief of Staff has a reputation for toughness--but will he use it against his own party? If he does not, he will cause a lot of short term harm, but he will also give the Republicans an opening for resurgence over the long term.