Opinion: President Obama’s campaign takes a page from Truman’s playbook

Congress has a long “To Do” list for the rest of the year,
beginning with pumping up the economy.

But the calendar of working days on the Republican majority
leader’s website shows Congress is scheduled to be in session only 52 more days
this year.

{mosads}That allows little time to address the debt ceiling again,
extend the payroll tax cuts, prevent student loan interest rates from doubling
and decide whether to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Speaker John Boehner reportedly told a meeting of the House
GOP last week: “Let’s call bulls–t, bulls–t! This election is going to be all
about the economy.”

The Speaker is right, but the joke may be on him.

President Obama is already blaming lack of action from
Boehner’s Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the poor
economy. And that campaign strategy is just getting started. The question is
how much political power accusations of “Republican obstructionism” will have
with voters in the final stretch of the campaign.

What is certain is that as the House, Senate and
presidential campaigns enter the summer months, every argument from now on will
center on what the politically paralyzed Congress has failed to do on economic
issues.

The trend started last week with President Clinton’s
declaration that President Obama should just go ahead and give Republicans in
Congress another extension of the Bush tax cuts — though not permanently — in
order to avoid an end of the year economic cliff.

And Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein speculated last
week that one reason to vote for a Republican president was that it would
eliminate all excuses and force the GOP House majority to take action on the economy.

The assumption at the heart of what Klein and Clinton are
saying is congressional Republicans are currently playing politics while the
economy burns.

Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s reelection spokeswoman, said last
week there are “a million jobs on the table in Congress right now that they
could move on.”

Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans are quick to point
out that the GOP-controlled House has passed some 30 “jobs” bills that have not
been acted upon in the Senate.

But those “jobs” bills are loaded with political poison
pills for Democrats. They are not serious proposals with potential to be the
basis for a deal that could be worked out in conference.

The best political defense of GOP inaction on Capitol Hill
comes from Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to Romney’s campaign and former
chairman of the Republican National Committee. He said Congress is right to do
nothing because the Obama White House has created “a hostile environment for
job creation in our economy and that’s why … the only thing that’s going to
change it are changing the policies, and that means changing the person in the
White House.”

The Obama campaign team’s response to the Gillespie defense
is straight out of Harry Truman’s political playbook.

In the 1948 race, the Democrat ran against a do-nothing,
obstructionist Republican Congress and stunned his opponent with an upset win.

The Obama team is already showing signs of going beyond the
Truman playbook.

In a charge unprecedented in modern American presidential
politics, they are accusing Republicans in Congress, working in coordination
with Romney’s campaign, of not only “rooting for failure,” but of sabotaging
the economy for political gain.

A recent poll by ABC/Washington Post asked Americans who
they thought was more responsible for the country’s current economic problems —
President Obama or President Bush.

The Republican president still gets 49 percent of the blame,
while the Democrat who succeeded him is held responsible by 34 percent.

But a November 2011 poll by a bipartisan group found 94
percent of Americans think congressional inaction is hurting the economy. That
fits with Congress’s dismal job approval ratings.

That is the opening for President Obama to play Harry
Truman.

Why is unemployment still so high? A big part of the reason
is that public sector jobs are continually being lost at the federal, state and
local level.

Government payrolls dropped by 13,000 in May. By contrast,
the private sector added 82,000 jobs. Yet the GOP Congress refuses to invest in
public sector spending to steady the fragile economy.

Obama has already cut taxes and reduced the number of public
sector jobs since he took office. This is not a matter of opinion. It is an
economic fact. But the GOP never acknowledges it and refuses to work on his
plan for creating new jobs.

The facts are there to build an argument. But is it enough
for President Obama to stage a revival of the 1948 campaign, when the Democrat
incumbent won reelection by attacking a do-nothing Congress?

This time the chant will be, “Give ‘em hell, Barack!”

Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox
News Channel.