David Broder: How Bush Hopes to Avoid Fate of Past Presidents' Second Terms
David S. Broder, The Washington Post, 1/20/05
As he takes the oath of office for the second time today, President George W. Bush will confront major challenges, including an unfinished war in Iraq and a looming budget deficit and determined political opposition at home. And he also must overcome what some historians refer to as the"second-term curse" -- the pattern of meager progress and increasing frustration for almost every reelected president in modern times.
Bush has armed himself for these struggles in the best way he knows how, by rolling up a popular-vote majority and spurring his party to gains in Congress. He told The Washington Post in an interview last Friday:"I'm excited about the second term. I worked hard to get there and campaigned on some specific issues that I'm looking forward to working with the Congress on."
But if the portraits of former second-term presidents could speak to Bush, almost all of them would say,"Beware what may befall you." From Woodrow Wilson, who suffered a stroke and saw his dream of the League of Nations rejected, down to Bill Clinton, who had to survive an impeachment effort, the pattern has not been happy.
As if to ward off a similar fate, Bush has set forth a highly ambitious agenda for the next four years. Karl Rove, the architect of both of Bush's White House victories, said in an interview that, from his first conversations with the president about the 2004 campaign, it was clear that Bush's instinct was to set forth big goals and build the political momentum needed to reach them.
In his first post-election news conference, Bush claimed a mandate for an array of initiatives, such as improving health care and education here at home and encouraging freedom and democracy in the Middle East and other parts of the world where, he said,"tyranny and terror" have long prevailed. Challenging Congress to step up to its"serious responsibilities and historic opportunities," he said pointedly to Democrats and Republicans:"In the election of 2004, large issues were set before our country. They were discussed every day on the campaign. With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort -- and results."
The election provided Bush with a strong start in meeting the challenges of his second term. He improved on his 2000 showing, when he trailed Al Gore in the popular vote, and in November he became the first Republican president in 104 years to be reelected with majorities in the House and the Senate.
Since Election Day, he has substantially revised his Cabinet, naming new people to run nine of the 15 departments. He has shifted some assignments on the senior White House staff, relieving aides who had exhausted themselves in the first term. As for the president himself, Joshua B. Bolten, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said,"there's no sign he is running low on energy. He sets a fast pace for everyone else."
Bush will need all the momentum he can muster, because the challenges are formidable. As the war in Iraq heads into its third year, the casualties continue and the outcome remains in doubt. It has been costly in lives and treasure, and it has strained the capacity of the military to meet other global commitments.
Soon, Bush will make his first overseas trip as a reelected president, heading to Europe to try to repair relations with several longtime allies that opposed his decision to oust Saddam Hussein. He also must keep an eye on the falling dollar, the worsening trade balance, and the rise of new economic powers in China, India and the Pacific Rim.
Meanwhile, here at home the bill is coming due on the huge budget deficits of his first term, even as demands rise for more government spending on health care, education and transportation. Energy policy -- long stalemated by regional and environmental issues -- is in gridlock.
As if all that were not enough, the president has placed at the top of his agenda the revision of four basic American institutions, seeking fundamental changes that would alter the lives of virtually every American.
He wants to change the Social Security system, the 70-year-old prop for the retirement planning of all workers and their families, shifting it from a fixed monthly government stipend to a payout that would depend on people's skills in gauging the financial markets.
He wants to intervene to slow the flood of lawsuits filed in civil cases, limit the awards for damages and reduce the incentives for lawyers to file such suits.
He wants to revise American high schools, stiffening the requirements for graduation, even as grade schools nationwide still struggle to meet the requirements he put on them in his first term.
And he wants to remake the judicial branch of government with the appointment of more"strict constructionist" judges, including in all likelihood one or more new justices who could shift the balance on the Supreme Court.
It would be a breathtakingly bold agenda for any president. But as Charles O. Jones, a University of Wisconsin scholar of the presidency, said, it is particularly striking to see"a second-term president with the smallest electoral college majority since Wilson in 1916 undertake the most ambitious agenda since Roosevelt in 1936."
Every new presidential term begins on a note of hope, and this one is no different -- even though Bush is, by some measures, in a shakier political position than many of his predecessors.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll completed Sunday placed Bush's job approval at 52 percent, with 46 percent saying they disapproved. By comparison, Clinton's approval-disapproval scores were 60 to 34 percent in January 1997, and Ronald Reagan's were 68 to 28 percent in January 1985.
Yet both those presidents joined the list of chief executives who saw things go sharply downhill after their first terms. Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson, who enjoyed high popularity after filling out terms for predecessors who died in office, were so weakened politically that they chose not to seek reelection. Truman was done in by the Korean War, inflation and scandals; Johnson, by the Vietnam War, racial unrest and a reaction against the Great Society legislation.
Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal and the coverup of that"third-rate burglary." Dwight D. Eisenhower and Reagan were slowed by illnesses and foreign policy reversals -- the U-2 affair for the former, the Iran-contra scandal for the latter.
Only Reagan retained enough popularity at the end of his term to see a successor of the same party, Vice President George H.W. Bush, elected. For the others, retirement came amid loud rumblings of political dissent and disillusionment.
The causes varied, but the results were eerily similar. Eight years ago, when Clinton was about to embark on his second term, the Brookings Institution's Stephen Hess, a historian of the presidency, remarked on the"very cyclical" nature of that office."Second terms are like hourglasses," he said,"and the sands run out. . . . Not one of the postwar presidents did better in their second terms than in their first. The slope is always downward."
Interviewed last week, Hess said:"The picture remains the same. Clinton understood the problem but still was unable to avoid the pattern. I think Bush understands it, and even if he never talks about it, he must have thought about it."
Rove and Bolten say the topic has not come up in pre-inauguration conversations with the president -- not because of superstition, they say, but because Bush is so focused on the future.
Rove offers explanations specific to each of the other two-term presidents to explain their comeuppances, insisting that he sees no historical inevitability to the pattern. Both say they see solid reasons for optimism.
While echoing Bush's warning that the coming year will be"difficult" in budgetary terms, Bolten said the improving economy makes the picture far brighter than it looked during much of the first term."The budget is a challenge," he said,"but we're on the right path."
As he takes the oath of office for the second time today, President George W. Bush will confront major challenges, including an unfinished war in Iraq and a looming budget deficit and determined political opposition at home. And he also must overcome what some historians refer to as the"second-term curse" -- the pattern of meager progress and increasing frustration for almost every reelected president in modern times.
Bush has armed himself for these struggles in the best way he knows how, by rolling up a popular-vote majority and spurring his party to gains in Congress. He told The Washington Post in an interview last Friday:"I'm excited about the second term. I worked hard to get there and campaigned on some specific issues that I'm looking forward to working with the Congress on."
But if the portraits of former second-term presidents could speak to Bush, almost all of them would say,"Beware what may befall you." From Woodrow Wilson, who suffered a stroke and saw his dream of the League of Nations rejected, down to Bill Clinton, who had to survive an impeachment effort, the pattern has not been happy.
As if to ward off a similar fate, Bush has set forth a highly ambitious agenda for the next four years. Karl Rove, the architect of both of Bush's White House victories, said in an interview that, from his first conversations with the president about the 2004 campaign, it was clear that Bush's instinct was to set forth big goals and build the political momentum needed to reach them.
In his first post-election news conference, Bush claimed a mandate for an array of initiatives, such as improving health care and education here at home and encouraging freedom and democracy in the Middle East and other parts of the world where, he said,"tyranny and terror" have long prevailed. Challenging Congress to step up to its"serious responsibilities and historic opportunities," he said pointedly to Democrats and Republicans:"In the election of 2004, large issues were set before our country. They were discussed every day on the campaign. With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort -- and results."
The election provided Bush with a strong start in meeting the challenges of his second term. He improved on his 2000 showing, when he trailed Al Gore in the popular vote, and in November he became the first Republican president in 104 years to be reelected with majorities in the House and the Senate.
Since Election Day, he has substantially revised his Cabinet, naming new people to run nine of the 15 departments. He has shifted some assignments on the senior White House staff, relieving aides who had exhausted themselves in the first term. As for the president himself, Joshua B. Bolten, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said,"there's no sign he is running low on energy. He sets a fast pace for everyone else."
Bush will need all the momentum he can muster, because the challenges are formidable. As the war in Iraq heads into its third year, the casualties continue and the outcome remains in doubt. It has been costly in lives and treasure, and it has strained the capacity of the military to meet other global commitments.
Soon, Bush will make his first overseas trip as a reelected president, heading to Europe to try to repair relations with several longtime allies that opposed his decision to oust Saddam Hussein. He also must keep an eye on the falling dollar, the worsening trade balance, and the rise of new economic powers in China, India and the Pacific Rim.
Meanwhile, here at home the bill is coming due on the huge budget deficits of his first term, even as demands rise for more government spending on health care, education and transportation. Energy policy -- long stalemated by regional and environmental issues -- is in gridlock.
As if all that were not enough, the president has placed at the top of his agenda the revision of four basic American institutions, seeking fundamental changes that would alter the lives of virtually every American.
He wants to change the Social Security system, the 70-year-old prop for the retirement planning of all workers and their families, shifting it from a fixed monthly government stipend to a payout that would depend on people's skills in gauging the financial markets.
He wants to intervene to slow the flood of lawsuits filed in civil cases, limit the awards for damages and reduce the incentives for lawyers to file such suits.
He wants to revise American high schools, stiffening the requirements for graduation, even as grade schools nationwide still struggle to meet the requirements he put on them in his first term.
And he wants to remake the judicial branch of government with the appointment of more"strict constructionist" judges, including in all likelihood one or more new justices who could shift the balance on the Supreme Court.
It would be a breathtakingly bold agenda for any president. But as Charles O. Jones, a University of Wisconsin scholar of the presidency, said, it is particularly striking to see"a second-term president with the smallest electoral college majority since Wilson in 1916 undertake the most ambitious agenda since Roosevelt in 1936."
Every new presidential term begins on a note of hope, and this one is no different -- even though Bush is, by some measures, in a shakier political position than many of his predecessors.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll completed Sunday placed Bush's job approval at 52 percent, with 46 percent saying they disapproved. By comparison, Clinton's approval-disapproval scores were 60 to 34 percent in January 1997, and Ronald Reagan's were 68 to 28 percent in January 1985.
Yet both those presidents joined the list of chief executives who saw things go sharply downhill after their first terms. Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson, who enjoyed high popularity after filling out terms for predecessors who died in office, were so weakened politically that they chose not to seek reelection. Truman was done in by the Korean War, inflation and scandals; Johnson, by the Vietnam War, racial unrest and a reaction against the Great Society legislation.
Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal and the coverup of that"third-rate burglary." Dwight D. Eisenhower and Reagan were slowed by illnesses and foreign policy reversals -- the U-2 affair for the former, the Iran-contra scandal for the latter.
Only Reagan retained enough popularity at the end of his term to see a successor of the same party, Vice President George H.W. Bush, elected. For the others, retirement came amid loud rumblings of political dissent and disillusionment.
The causes varied, but the results were eerily similar. Eight years ago, when Clinton was about to embark on his second term, the Brookings Institution's Stephen Hess, a historian of the presidency, remarked on the"very cyclical" nature of that office."Second terms are like hourglasses," he said,"and the sands run out. . . . Not one of the postwar presidents did better in their second terms than in their first. The slope is always downward."
Interviewed last week, Hess said:"The picture remains the same. Clinton understood the problem but still was unable to avoid the pattern. I think Bush understands it, and even if he never talks about it, he must have thought about it."
Rove and Bolten say the topic has not come up in pre-inauguration conversations with the president -- not because of superstition, they say, but because Bush is so focused on the future.
Rove offers explanations specific to each of the other two-term presidents to explain their comeuppances, insisting that he sees no historical inevitability to the pattern. Both say they see solid reasons for optimism.
While echoing Bush's warning that the coming year will be"difficult" in budgetary terms, Bolten said the improving economy makes the picture far brighter than it looked during much of the first term."The budget is a challenge," he said,"but we're on the right path."
[Editor's Note: This comprises only about one half of the original piece.]