Obama basically cannot be Truman in 1948, or Clinton in 1996. The Republicans do not control Congress, only one house of it. There is another problem. For two years, Obama's party held both houses with large majorities, and did very little. Obamacare is both expensive and unpopular.
What difference does only one house make? The Republican Party has effective veto power over any Obama initiatives for the final 2 years of his first term. And a handful of less extreme Republican senators, but still Republican, had veto power for most of Obama's first 2 years too. Obama will have had a supermajority for only 1/8 of his first term and even then a couple of conservative Democrats and one Independent who campaigned for John McCain had veto power. So he made some progress his first two years, but it was limited as he watered down policies enough for them to pass congress, and then the GOP won the House, and he ran into total gridlock and the recovery stalled. I'm a bit skeptical he'll try to make this case but I think it's a solid one if he did.
