If He's Re-Elected, Will Obama be a Successful Second-Termer?

Barack Obama will face serious challenges if he's re-elected in November. Of the nineteen presidents who have won a second term, only seven have been judged to have succeeded during that time in office.

Many articles have recently been written about the impending battle between the president and Congress over the extension of the Bush tax cuts, raising the debt limit, the potential of automatic cuts in spending and various tax benefits that expire. The necessity of resolving these issues is what Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke refers to as a “fiscal cliff.” It is possible that these momentous decisions will be given brief extensions so that the next president and Congress will be saddled with making them. As a second-term president Obama would face obstacles rarely experienced by a chief executive returned to office. Compromise has been the source of major legislation since the end of World War II, but Obama would face sizeable numbers of members of the Senate and House who have stated they will not compromise. There are ominous clouds on the horizon for a second term for Obama.

The list of those who prevailed in their second term includes George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Those who had troubled or failed second terms were Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. (Lincoln is not included in this list as his second term was so brief).

The dominant source of failure for second-term presidents has been their inability to successfully work with Congress. Fully eight second-term president had troubled or failed second terms due directly to clashes between Congress and the White House. Even having a congressional majority of a president's own party is no assurance of relief -- Andrew Jackson was censured by a Congress controlled by his own Democratic Party, a slight he never forgave, and Eisenhower, a Republican, fought legislation drafted by a fellow Republican, John W. Bricker of Ohio, who sought to take away presidential powers.

Those presidents who served with a Congress controlled by the opposing party during their second term included Wilson, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton, but the competitive battle between second-term presidents and Congress dates to the fight George Washington had with Congress over the Jay Treaty. He won approval only after expending considerable effort working directly with members of Congress, compromising and cajoling. And that was with a Congress having a majority of like-minded Federalists and a president who was revered as the nation's hero.

A century-and-a-half later, when the Democrats won majorities in Congress during Eisenhower's second term, Ike worked quietly behind the scenes with the Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson, to gain approval of his legislative agenda. It might  be cynical, but perhaps accurate, to postulate that some of one-time Eisenhower vice president Richard Nixon’s rather liberal legislative forays were prompted by his desire to get along with a Democratic Congress. Ronald Reagan, for his part, developed a close relationship with Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill to somehow fulfill his legislative goals, compromised as they were. 

But the example from history that Obama, if he is re-elected, will most likely follow is that of the second Clinton administration. President Clinton had encouraged the Democratic Party to move more closely to the center politically well before he ran for president. His welfare legislation reflected that. His success in working with Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in formulating debt reduction and tax increase legislation -- leading to a budget surplus -- is the touchstone for success in working with an opposing party to fulfill a president’s legislative agenda. But this was followed by this same House of Representatives voting to impeach Bill Clinton, obviously an extreme example of a president‘s failure to work successfully with a Congress. And yet, Bill Clinton is among only seven presidents who were successful in their second term.

If he is re-elected, Barack Obama will, in all probability, face the daunting challenge of working with Republican majorities in the House and possibly in the Senate -- though the majorities will almost certainly be insufficient to override a presidential veto. Further complicating this challenge is the apparent disappearance of a spirit of compromise -- which has actually been a mainstay of legislation throughout the nation’s history, with one very momentous exception. Members of Congress from the South would not compromise on the subject of the expansion of slavery. Eleven states chose secession and the Civil War ensued.

Woodrow Wilson was the target of the Republican Party that wanted to even many a squabble they had with the president. He had defeated both William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt to win his first term. He spearheaded legislation Republicans opposed. But it would be the approval of the League of Nations treaty that would finally cause simmering Republican resentment to reach the boiling point. The treaty was never approved. The votes were there for approval had the president compromised over the wording of the League of Nations Covenent. But Wilson stood firm. It was the president, not the Congress, who refused to compromise.

So, can any meaningful predictions be made about a second Obama administration? He has recently exhibited a combination of moving to the center while simultaneously playing to his Democratic base by calling for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Speaker of the House John Boehner has claimed that the president backed away from an agreed compromise on raising the debt limit in August, and an article in the New York Times Magazine tends to support that charge. Given the rigidity of politics in Washington these days, it will take an unusually skillful second-term president to deliver solutions to the financial problems facing the nation. Will Barack Obama be up the challenge?