by Patrick Appel
Jonathan Bernstein provides one reason we don't give them credit for anything:
[There is an] overwhelming cultural bias in favor of crediting the big things that happen to presidents, not Congress. We do this reflexively...Barack Obama got DADT repeal through, after Bill Clinton failed. Barack Obama failed to pass energy/climate legislation. Yes, we'll occasionally get articles about how Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are doing, and every once in a while we'll have some attention to the individual legislative entrepreneurs who did the bulk of the work, but most of the time it's going to be the president that we [think] of.
And that's even more true as we go back through time: quick, when's the last time you even saw Tom Foley's name, let alone saw him blamed for some of the failures during Bill Clinton's first two years in office?