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When One Party Controls The Federal Government

NPR
Published March 30, 2017 at 12:40 PM EDT
With smiles and a wave, President Harry Truman, left, and his successor, president-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, leave the White House in an open car for inauguration ceremonies in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 1953. Sitting in the front is Sen. Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, and behind him is House Speaker Joe Martin. (AP)
With smiles and a wave, President Harry Truman, left, and his successor, president-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, leave the White House in an open car for inauguration ceremonies in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 1953. Sitting in the front is Sen. Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, and behind him is House Speaker Joe Martin. (AP)

House Republican leaders are working with the White House on new legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act after their original replacement plan died. With one party in control of Congress and in the White House, the failure came as a surprise to some.

But historians Brian Balogh (@historyfellow) and Nathan Connolly (@ndbconnolly) say Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton all experienced the same problems when their party was in control.

Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Balogh and Connolly, co-hosts of the podcast BackStory, which is produced at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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