The last two Democratic presidents have a lot in common. Like Bill Clinton before him, Barack Obama is a gifted 40-something politician, a strong orator with a high likeability quotient, and a successful candidate who captured the White House by running on a platform offering big change. And like Clinton, Obama begins his administration blessed with large Democratic majorities at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
In fact, the Democratic congressional majorities that Obama enjoys now are virtually identical in size to what Clinton began with 16 years ago. Clinton was accompanied to Washington in 1993 by 258 Democrats in the House and 57 in the Senate. For Obama, last fall’s election produced 257 House Democrats and 56 Senate Democrats, a total that inches higher if one counts the two independent senators–Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernard Sanders of Vermont–who caucus with the Democrats. An additional Senate seat could fall to the Democrats once the long-running race in Minnesota is finally settled.
Yet the surface equality masks a major difference between the two Democratic Congresses. The conservative Southern wing of the party was much stronger then than it is now, giving Obama the chance to govern these days with a Democratic majority in Congress that is really a functioning majority…