Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ (12-28-04):

George W. Bush is now facing the legacy of Richard M. Nixon. Only two other presidents have won re-election since Tricky Dick resigned in disgrace amid the Watergate scandal in 1974 and both of them--Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton--found their second terms mired in scandal. So what will be Mr. Bush's fate two years on? Will he be well on his way to reforming Social Security and the tax code? Or will scandal consume his presidency too?

The answer rests in the origins of the curse of the second term. Lackluster second terms pre-date Nixon, of course. George Washington's first term was pivotal, but his second is most remembered only for his farewell address. James Madison's second term saw the British burn the White House. But what changed with Nixon's resignation is that journalists realized they could bring down a sitting president. It doesn't matter now whether the corruption (and any bureaucracy as large as the federal government contains corruption) actually leads to the Oval Office. The knives are out and, electoral mandates notwithstanding, presidents are most vulnerable after they have a first term record to pick through. ...

History, however, is only a good predictor until it isn't. Before Election Day this year, we were incessantly told that Mr. Bush was going to be turned out of office because--among other things--no president had ever won re-election after having a net jobs loss on his watch. Two years ago we heard the point echoed today about a president's party losing seats in off-year elections. Yet somehow Mr. Bush managed to win re-election for himself and to add to the Republican majorities in the House and Senate in both the 2002 and the 2004 elections.
If anything, the history of the Bush presidency so far is that it isn't following historical trends. One reason Mr. Bush has "beat" history is that the nation is in the midst of a realignment that has been a long time in the making. The war on terror and the end of the Cold War has already transformed foreign policy. Building liberal democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq is also giving the nation a fresh look at its own moral underpinnings. Meanwhile, voters are being confronted with changing the definition of marriage and saving Social Security--the bedrock of the New Deal--from bankruptcy.

It's no wonder we're now seeing a string of close elections. The nation is now in the midst of setting a new course in history. Whether President Bush is successful in helping chart that new course depends on whether he can now excise Nixon's ghost from the White House and from the newsrooms around the country.