'Lately, it really has seemed as if the Obama White House is incapable of producing good news beyond the fact that the debt ceiling wasn’t smashed. Swooning websites, security snoops run amok — there’d be some comfort in believing that it’s all historically inevitable. “In almost every case, you can argue that the second terms have been pretty dreadful,” said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian.
Think about it. Richard Nixon had to resign. Bill Clinton got impeached. George W. Bush had an average second-term approval rating of 37 percent, which the Gallup people say was the worst presidential plummet in modern history.
Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and spent much of his second term in the bedroom. Franklin Roosevelt was one of the country’s most successful presidents, but that was because of Terms 1 and 3. Two was a mess.
In fact, the pattern goes all the way back to George Washington. “Certainly, from his point of view, it was horrible,” said Joseph Ellis, who has written biographies of both Washington and Thomas Jefferson. One of the reasons was the eruption of a hyperpartisan media. When Washington retired, Ellis noted, one Jefferson-backed paper announced: “We can all pray for his imminent death.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/opinion/collins-the-curse-of-the-second.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131031
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire