Second-term perils
seattletimes.nwsource.com
By Thomas E. Cronin
Guest columnist
Special to The Seattle Times
Sunday, January 29, 2006
George Bush faces stormy weather following re-election
President Bush had a rough, some would say wretched, first year of his second term. Consider: Iraq insurgencies and mounting U.S. casualties; Katrina and FEMA; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Harriet Miers; soaring deficits and sinking poll numbers. On and on go the miscues. It's more like hail on — than hail to — this chief.
Can his second term get worse? As Alfred J. Zacher rightly concluded in his 1996 book, "Trial and Triumph: Presidential Power and the Second Term," second terms more often are marked by trials than triumphs.
Bush's stew partly is of his own making. It's also part of the nature of the job. As Adlai Stevenson once famously said, ours is a system in which we pick a president every four years, then for the next four years pick the president apart.
Some presidents, like George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, have risen above the odds, and Bush might learn from them, especially T.R.
Some second-termers have had it even worse than Bush. James Madison had to flee town as the White House and the Capitol burned down. Things got so bad economically and politically that Grover Cleveland wanted to flee town. Richard Nixon, of course, prematurely left town — because of impending impeachment and conviction over Watergate. Bill Clinton was impeached. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and became an invalid. All these in second terms.
Can Bush make a comeback? His critics have a long record of underestimating him — as a candidate for Texas governor, as a presidential candidate against Al Gore, as a candidate against John Kerry for a second term.
The record of past second terms, however, is not very promising. Moreover, Bush's particular problems will be hard to overcome. Like Lyndon Johnson and Nixon in their second terms, Bush appears to have lost at least half of the population on the exceedingly important matter of trust or credibility — not to mention credibility around the world. Opposition now to what is largely considered "the Bush-Cheney war" is steadily increasing and it is improbable that this can be reversed, no matter how many elections are held in Iraq and no matter how many times Bush takes to his increasingly fragile bully pulpit.
Bush, it appears, has lost most all of the Democrats for good, and he steadily loses independents and Republicans. Moderate Republicans are critical of huge deficits, the defense of torture and unauthorized domestic spying, among other things. The president lost conservatives over the Miers Supreme Court nomination, immigration policy, and his belated promises — sounding like a Great Society Democrat — in the aftermath of last fall's hurricanes.
When was the last time a president had a really successful term after his first term? Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third term is a plausible answer; his second was weakened by his rejected court-packing plan for the Supreme Court, his clashes with Congress, and the country's continuing deep Depression.
Troubled second terms began with Thomas Jefferson, who faced various foreign-policy problems, including his failed Embargo Act of 1807. Ulysses Grant and others were overwhelmed by Congress, corruption and events. LBJ, plagued by the Vietnam War, was encouraged not to stand for re-election, even by leaders in his own party. Woodrow Wilson might have made a fine six-year, single-term president. His last year-and-a-half was the absolute nadir of his presidency. Madison had a respectable second term, although it included the War of 1812 with the embarrassing burning by the British of the White House, Capitol and other federal buildings.
Washington, Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt, on the other hand, while having their share of problems with Congress, had effective second terms. On balance, they worked well enough with Congress, provided the necessary executive energy, and strengthened the office of president. Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower had decent second terms, though not as successful as their first. Reagan's second term was marred by the Iran-contra scandals, though his work with Mikhail Gorbachev in bringing an end to the Cold War won him acclaim. Eisenhower, though reasonably popular, had a tough recession to deal with and appeared withdrawn or tired toward the end of his presidency, providing the Kennedy Democrats with their central 1960 campaign theme: "Let's get the country moving again."
Political scientist Clinton Rossiter once wrote, "Every president's sun starts to set forever, the day he begins his second term." His observation raises this question: Has the 22nd Amendment, prohibiting third terms, made it harder for recent second-termers? Perhaps, but probably not much.
It's true that the two-term limit, combined with today's nearly four-year campaigns, means an incumbent president has to contend with candidates jockeying early on within his own party, which is clearly happening with Bush today. Moreover, there is an understandable sense of urgency, if not impatience, as second-term presidents rush to get their job done.
But most pre-22nd Amendment presidents assumed they would exit after two terms, as did their colleagues and the public. Thus, Jefferson announced at the outset of his second term that it would be his last. Even Teddy Roosevelt, who could have been re-elected, stepped aside because he thought the two-term tradition established in 1796 by Washington was an appropriate precedent.
More critical may be how a president can handle the modern-day pressures of the Oval Office, and the increasingly rough scrutiny Americans have been giving presidents over the past 50 years. Why has this been?
First, both the magnitude of the job and the expectations for presidential leadership have grown.
Abraham Lincoln and FDR may have had to deal with more explosive crises, but the size of the government, the size of the federal budget and the incredibly complex and enhanced role of the United States in the world since World War II have exponentially expanded.
Second, Americans — with good reason — are notably less trusting of their national officials. The Pew Center for Research notes that while a certain amount of skepticism has always been central to the American national character, this healthy skepticism has deteriorated to a distrust and cynicism. Only about 30 percent of the U.S. public today trusts government officials in Washington "to do the right thing" almost all of the time or even most of the time — down from 70 to 75 percent of the people in the late '50s and early '60s. Vietnam, Watergate, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, "weapons of mass destruction" and domestic spying have taken a cumulative toll.
Third, our highly competitive 24/7 cable, Internet and blogger media are less reverential and more cynical about presidential spin. We have always had a critical and often feisty press, but the generation of James Reston, Theodore White, Hugh Sidey and Walter Cronkite was kinder and gentler than today's Maureen Dowd, Jon Stewart, Seymour Hersh and Michael Moore on the left, and Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan on the right. Many of the writers seem guided by Aldous Huxley, who once said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad!"
Any president who wins a second term has done so in part because of successes in the first term. Those successes, plus the victory of re-election, inevitably bring a certain amount of glory and fame to the president. These in turn often beget hubris, if not arrogance, and that can breed resentment.
This may be one of the reasons that Congress has almost always treated presidents more roughly in their second terms. It may also be because presidents have overreached or tried too hard to cover up mistakes.
What can Bush do now — if anything?
Mostly, what is to be learned from past presidencies is that effective second-termers have to be honest with Congress and the American people. Also, a president regularly has to build majority coalitions in Congress, often across party lines.
A second-term president has to reach out and understand the changing moods in the nation — never an easy thing to do. It was something that Cleveland (in his second, nonconsecutive term), LBJ and Nixon plainly failed to do.
Bush appears to be trying, in vain, to be like Teddy Roosevelt — determined, feisty and vigorously championing the presidency and its implied or inherent prerogatives.
But T.R. didn't have an unpopular war to defend. Indeed, in his second term, he won the Nobel Prize for his stalwart peacekeeping efforts in helping to conclude the Russian-Japanese War. And, however expansionist his stewardship notions of presidential power, T.R. didn't overreach as often and as persistently as our current incumbent.
So, second terms are not inevitably unkind to a president — just most of the time and for a long list of reasons.
Bush has both the challenges that come with second terms, plus problems of his own making. Together, they make for a steep climb.
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Thomas E. Cronin is McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership at Colorado College. He served as president of Whitman College from l993 to 2005, and is the author or co-author of several books on the presidency and American government. |
