Barack Obama et Lyndon Johnson: des leçons du passé?

Le Président Obama n'est pas le premier à être confronté à un Congrès hostile. Sa relation avec le Speaker John Boehner est tendue et on peine à faire avancer l'agenda législatif. Il y a cinquante ans Lyndon Johnson faisait face à Charles Halleck dans une situation similaire. Obama devrait-il s'inspirer de son prédécesseur démocrate?

 "“Well, I’ll be damned!” Johnson exclaimed when his congressional liaison, Larry O’Brien, gave him the news. He had already decided on a battle plan, calling out to his wife, “Bird! Let’s have Congress over tonight!”

 So at 5 p.m., just as the black crepe of mourning for President John F. Kennedy was coming down after 30 days, and Christmas greenery was going up, Johnson welcomed more than 200 members to the East Room for a bourbon-and-eggnog reception, lighting a big yule log in the fireplace himself. Then he stood up on a small gilt chair and apologized to Charlie Halleck, “if anyone down here said anything ugly about you.” “We’re Americans first,” he added. “I hope we can disagree without being disagreeable.” The foreign aid bill passed the next morning, in a special 7 a.m. vote in the House. “At that moment,” Johnson would later recall, “the power of the government began flowing back to the White House.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/a-toast-to-the-bad-old-days-101455.html?hp=f2