Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics

Republicans celebrated their return to power after a twenty-year hiatus. Not only did they win the presidency handily, but they also controlled both houses of Congress—although by narrow margins: one vote in the Senate (48-47, with one Independent) and ten votes in the House of Representatives (221-211, with one Independent). Only once during the previous twenty years had they achieved congressional majorities: In the first post-war elections in 1946, they captured control of both chambers with sizable margins (51-45 in the Senate, 245-188 in the House). That Congress produced several landmark laws with bipartisan support—for example, the National Security Act and the Presidential Succession Act both in 1947, and several foreign relief acts, including the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 (the Marshall Plan). But it passed into political lore as “the awful 80 th Congress ” repeatedly denounced during President Harry S. Truman’s come-from-behind 1948 reelection campaign. (Because of intra-party divisions, however, Truman fared little better with the Democratic 8