Cross-posted at dailyKos
The first 100 days of George W. Bush’s second term have long-since passed, and the conventional wisdom has been proven wrong in two important ways: It did not presage a “return to normalcy” and moderation, and nor had Bush been vindicated with a mandate and “political capital.”
Though he’s had victories – Rice, Gonzales, the Iraqi elections and the bankruptcy bill being the most notable – his defeats have had far greater impact. On Social Security, on Schiavo, on Iraq at large, the President has been battered down to the low 40s in most approval polls. (Fox, when not leading the hunt for the Missing White Woman of the Week, says otherwise.)
Bush’s newfound weakness may surprise some, but like the six-year itch, this phenomenon is well-known in American politics. And if history is any guide, we can expect more of the same. I’d like to illustrate how this malaise has affected nearly every two-termer, and why, despite its reliability, it’s no guarantee of success for the opposition party.
Here is Part I of a (rather long) history of the Second-Term Blues.
The last president to be re-elected by such a close margin was Woodrow Wilson, in 1916. A Democrat who pursued progressive reforms with a Christian zeal you may recognize, Wilson squeaked by his Republican challenger, Supreme Court Justice Charles Evan Hughes (an uninspiring compromise chosen because he was acceptable to all factions) when the small state of California, after a campaign fought on the issue of war and peace, cast its votes for the incumbent. Thus vindicated, Wilson prepared to cement his legacy with his second term.
But that was not to be. Wilson, who (with a good eye for the theatrical) had sailed to Europe for the peace conference ending the First World War, was determined to remake the world according to his vision, through the League of Nations. Though the Republicans had retaken the Senate in the 1918 midterms, Wilson was unperturbed, and convinced of his own righteousness and power, he refused any and all efforts at compromise. His opponents in the Senate, led by Henry Cabot Lodge and Robert La Follette, handed him a humiliating defeat when they killed the League through a thousand cuts, tacking on amendments until the treaty was unrecognizable.
Things only got worse for him from there. Two strokes in 1919 had crippled Wilson’s left side, and for the rest of his term his wife Edith Galt Wilson and his doctor Admiral Grayson acted as gatekeepers, carefully screening what he saw and who he spoke with (up to and including the Cabinet and Vice-President Thomas Marshall), and thwarting halfhearted attempts to have the President legally removed. Despite his professed reverence for the Constitution, between this and the Espionage and Sedition Acts his record as a democrat has been questioned.
America at large was in turmoil as well. Peace had not brought prosperity with it, not at first: The postwar recession of 1920-1923 was the deepest that America has ever suffered, even deeper than the Great Depression. Millions were thrown out of work, and strikes and violence between labor and management were omnipresent. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, acting without interference from above and often to great acclaim, waged a war against labor, socialism, and civil liberties in the first – and little-known – Red Scare. Wilson’s second term ended with the still-unsolved Wall Street Bombing, which took 40 lives and was the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil for 75 years, and the crushing electoral defeat handed to Democratic candidates James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt by the Republicans, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. The brief Democratic interregnum had come to an end.
The party of Wilson would not retake the White House until 1932, when one-time loser Franklin D. Roosevelt rode reform, charisma, and hope into the White House, thumping beleaguered incumbent Herbert Hoover in the process. His first term, that of the New Deal, was perhaps the most vigorous the country has ever seen, as a whirlwind of new legislation and agencies fundamentally altered America’s political and economic landscape. He was resoundingly elected in 1936 over Gov. Alf Landon, in the greatest electoral victory America had ever seen.
His jubilation, like Wilson’s, was short-lived. The largely conservative Supreme Court had a tendency to strike down FDR’s New Deal legislation. Frustrated, FDR counterattacked with the ill-advised court-packing scheme, which proposed to expand the Supreme Court – implicitly, with liberal justices. Conservatives, and quite a few liberals, were appalled, and fought the bill tenaciously. It died in July of that year. Though FDR ultimately won the judicial war, this battle was his first major defeat on any front since becoming President.
Even on economics, Roosevelt wasn’t invulnerable. In 1937 suffered a shocking setback when a recession hit late in the year and continued into 1938. Due in part to the Administration’s cutbacks in Federal spending the year before, the downturn shocked Roosevelt and further eroded his popularity and public faith in the New Deal. (This eventually bore fruit, as Roosevelt switched his emphasis from reform to recovery and embraced Keynesian economics, though he would have to wait until 1941 for the massive expenditures necessary to jump-start the broken economy.)
1938 continued the pattern. Emboldened by FDR’s apparent weakness, conservatives mounted a strong challenge in the midterms. Even many Southern Democrats, alienated by the President’s liberalism and perceived thirst for power, took part in the attack. The House especially showed a sudden willingness to oppose White House measures, and in November the Republicans gained 81 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate. (Due to the previous four elections having been Democratic landslides, the Democrats retained majorities in both houses.)
Even FDR’s unprecedented third term was preceded by troubling evidence of a growing split in the Democratic Party. The President’s decision to run again, though welcomed by the Democratic Party at large, offended many politicians who had hoped to run from the job, including Vice-President Jack Garner. FDR, in turn, had been angered by Garner’s complicity in the rebellion of 1938, and had him removed from the 1940 ticket. Though the angry outbursts from Southern Democrats died down before the election, they presaged what was in store for 1948 and 1968.
FDR won yet again, of course, over Wendell Willkie, a liberal who would eventually become the President’s friend and ally. Roosevelt’s strong leadership throughout World War II buoyed his reputation and secured his legacy, but his second term, though hardly a failure, must be considered the disappointing second act of the greatest Presidency of the 20th century.
Next: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon