More Midterm Lessons From History?

Beware journalists who want to teach you the lessons of history. Now that we have re-established that caveat, it is worth our while to read Peter Baker's article in today's Washington Post. In it, he offers "midtern survival tips" for President Bush, drawing especially from the lessons of Presidents Clinton and Reagan before him. I recently drew my own lessons from those midterms, so I suppose I would have been drawn to an argument like Baker's, especially when he couches his argument in qualifiers, such as:

Historical comparisons are always fraught with peril, since each president faces his own distinct challenges and brings unique faculties and flaws to the task. But veterans of past administrations see patterns that offer hope even to badly weakened presidents such as Bush. Adversaries who assume that Bush has been permanently crippled by the Democratic takeover of Congress, they say, misunderstand the opportunities still available to him.

My guess is that rather than taking advantage of opportunities, the President will instead pay lip service to bipartisanship and then will immediately start blaminmg Democrats for most all failures in the next two years. He will also get the opportunity to utilize his veto pen a great deal. It does not take much of an imagination to envision gridlock, finger pointing from all sides, and the earliest presidential campaign season in history. Oh joy.