Should President Obama be rooting for Congressional Republicans this election season? History suggests as much.

Political analysts and consultants like to divine seismic shifts of allegiance every election cycle – “A new permanent Republican majority!” “No, wait, a historic generational lock for Democrats!” – but a core of the electorate since 1980 seems to have embraced the quintessentially American concept of checks and balances. We like divided government.

So should presidents. A succession of White Houses have mourned their party’s drubbing in midterm congressional elections, only to thrive thereafter. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton only became successful presidents after they suffered serious reversals in their first term’s mid-term election; a beleaguered Harry Truman only was re-elected president because he ran against an unpopular “do-nothing” Republican Congress. Even George H.W. Bush could take pride in his ability to bring at least some Congressional Democrats over in support of his military campaign to dislodge Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, in 1991.

From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, presidents have occasionally flourished when the other party rules the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. They alternated between appearing statesmanlike – striking bipartisan deals with the other side – and framing the opposition party as obstructionist, extremist, or both. When their own parties are in charge and scandals erupt or events don’t break in their direction, presidents often seem unable to get anything right – the public perceives them as overreaching, or weak. Given the travails of his first years in office, Bill Clinton can attest to the fact that it is awfully hard as president to explain to Americans not steeped in the tribal ways of Capitol Hill why a Democratic president can’t easily get a Senate Committee chairman with a ‘D’ next to his name to snap to attention and take his orders.

There is something to the notion that opposition control of Congress, conversely, benefits a president’s public standing – and can advance the national interest.

Most famously, Truman campaigned in 1948 against what he derided as a “good-for-nothing” Congress. During that year’s Democratic convention, he announced that he would bring Congress back to Washington for a special legislative session. Challenging Republicans to take steps that would support education, end inflation, and promote the struggle for civil rights, he ultimately spotlighted the GOP’s inaction on all these issues. He provided himself with a campaign theme that enabled him to defeat Republican nominee Thomas Dewey – and mount an epic comeback.

The New York Times’ John Harwood recently reported that Obama’s aides have a different historical analogy that they favor above all the rest – Reagan’s 1982 mid-term defeat and subsequent resurgence. Although Reagan didn’t preside over a change in control of Congress, he did watch as his party suffered a loss on Election Day of 26 House seats and seven governorships.

Obama’s aides are understandably drawn to the Reagan comparison: Like Obama’s now, Reagan’s approval ratings were stuck in the mid-forties; and like Obama’s stimulus plan, Reagan’s signature economic plan by 1982 hadn’t prevented unemployment from standing at a sky-high ten percent.

After the ’82 setback, however, Reagan capably squared off against an enlarged Democratic House majority – and he ultimately thrived. He actually began to strike some bipartisan deals with the other side.

He joined with Speaker Tip O’Neill and adopted a plan to strengthen Social Security. He didn’t rail against Congress but rather he negotiated and co-opted traditionally Democratic positions on some issues. He virtually eliminated from the 1984 campaign the once-effective Democratic critique that Republicans wanted to eviscerate the Social Security program and destroy the New Deal. Instead of appearing ideologically intransigent to the American electorate, Reagan instead managed in the wake of the ’82 loss to don the mantle of bipartisan statesman, pragmatist, patriot.

Assisted by an economy that in 1983 to 1984 was moving in the right direction in the eyes of voters, Reagan won a 49-state landslide. Clinton’s reaction to his 1994 mid-term election loss was similarly impressive.

Republicans – led by the firebrand from Georgia, Newt Gingrich – won control of the House for the first time in decades. Clinton’s presidency had hit rock bottom, as it had been plagued by the failed health care overhaul; pseudo-scandals such as Whitewater and Travelgate; the don’t-ask-don’t-tell firestorm; unpopular reforms such as the nationwide ban on assault rifles, and a budget that raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Clinton’s subsequent approach to the Republican Congress was a deft act of politics and policy-making. He occasionally adopted Republican policies as his own ideas, enacting a bipartisan welfare reform law that prompted at least one liberal administration official to resign in a huff.

At the same time, however, Clinton seized on other issues to frame his Republican opponents as extremists whose agenda revolved around cutting Medicare, slashing education and bringing the federal government to its knees. Like Reagan’s 1984 victory, Clinton’s re-election bid was boosted above all else by a growing economy. But it’s also true that the Republican takeover was a prelude to Clinton’s successful 1996 campaign for a second term. Having the other guys in charge turned out to be a blessing-in-disguise for a president who was still getting his bearings in the Oval Office.

If the economy isn’t moving in the right direction, it might not matter who controls the United States Congress; Obama could still be in big trouble in 2012. But it’s also conceivable that Obama could use a Republican takeover to his (and the nation’s) advantage.

Whether the topic is deficit reduction, immigration reform or the “war on terror,” Obama could look in the months ahead to strike bipartisan deals with Speaker John Boehner that would make Obama look statesmanlike, presidential, and highly effective. If his opponents overreach by demanding – let’s say – proof of Obama’s citizenship or voting to repeal Obama’s health care reform law, then Obama could portray himself as the sensible centrist standing up to an opposition party hijacked by its most single-minded and ideological leaders.

Republican control of the U.S. House may be just another in a series of stages in Obama’s still-evolving and influential presidency. Instead of signaling the beginning of the end of his White House years, it could mark the launch of his larger-than-life resurgence just in time for him to coast unexpectedly to re-election in 2012.

Matthew Dallek, a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, teaches history and politics at the University of California Washington Center. He is working on a book about the politics and policy of defending America during World War II.

*Photo of President Barack Obama meeting with Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in the Oval Office, Aug. 4, 2010, by Pete Souza, courtesy The White House.