HISTORY LESSONS FOR OBAMA IN HIS 2ND TERM O
f the 43 men who have served as president, only 16 have been granted a second term. The voters who awarded the fortunate ones with an extended lease on the White House chose them for any number of reasons ranging from greater personal appeal to the incumbent’s agenda, or satisfaction with the incumbent’s performance.
In President Obama’s case, it was a combination of all three. But Obama should look back on history for what might lie ahead. Second-term presidents who planned excessively bold
Unexpected events can trip up bold agendas
agendas based on perceived mandates, or on freedom from the constraints of having to run for re-election, have stumbled badly.
In fact, the goals of re-elected incumbents rarely comport with what ultimately takes place in the second term. Often, events — rather than anything in the winner’s playbook — can take unpredictable directions.
Few presidents were re-elected with as resounding a mandate as Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. His victory gave him a sense that some of his first-term frustrations could be reversed. There was no greater impediment to his plans to bring the nation out of the Great Depression than the Supreme Court, which had held unconstitutional the centerpieces of his New Deal.
So a few months later, FDR proposed to enlarge the Supreme Court by nominating a new justice for every sitting one older than 70, thus diluting the power of his opponents on the court. Despite his party’s huge Democratic margin in the Senate, FDR’s plan went down to defeat.
Lyndon Johnson was, technically, not a two-term president, but he had served out more than a year of the assassinated John Kennedy’s tenure. LBJ won in his own right in 1964, but the signposts on where his presidency was headed can be found in two post-election conversations.
LBJ AND MLK
The first was between Johnson and Martin Luther King. In speaking of his Great Society program, he told King, “We’ll be back up there (on Capitol Hill) working on our program ... because that offers a lot of opportunity for our young people that has been denied.” King’s response was enthusiastic.
The second conversation was with Sen. Richard Russell, D- Ga., who told LBJ, “I wish we could figure some way to get out of (Vietnam). ... We could be in there for the next 10 years.” Johnson’s civil rights and anti-poverty programs were his signal achievement along with Medicare; his undoing was the war in Vietnam.
In the flush of re-election, presidents read the results not only as a vindication of past policies but also as a green light for their agenda. As Bill Clinton recalled after his win in 1996, “I knew that all elections are about the future, so I outlined my agenda: higher school standards and universal access to college, a balanced budget that protected health care, education and the environment, targeted tax cuts to support home ownership, long-term care, college education and child rearing.” He achieved some goals but got derailed by theMonica Lewinsky scandal.
George W. Bush, who beat challenger John Kerry by only 2 percentage points in the popular vote, claimed a mandate. “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush boldly announced. His down-payment was to reform Social Security by introducing “personal retirement accounts.” The plan fizzled and gave Democrats ammunition to use against him in addition to their criticism of the IraqWar.
WAR INTRUDED
Blunders are less of a problem for presidents than unforeseen events. Woodrow Wilson, who won a second term in 1916 on the slogan “he kept us out of war,” found himself six months later going to Congress to declare war against Germany. In 1940, FDR won an unprecedented third term with a similar pledge and then had to break that vow because we had been attacked by Japan. So no matter what agenda a re-elected president lays out, he is subject to circumstances that neither he nor anyone else can foresee.
While Obama pledges to raise taxes on the wealthy to ease the deficit, pass the DREAM Act to benefit young illegal immigrants and spend billions to improve the national infrastructure, he could find himself dealing with a terrorist attack or, having failed to come to an agreement with congressional Republicans on the looming “fiscal cliff,” trying again to pull the nation out of recession.
It is as true today as it was in 1864, when Abraham Lincoln on the threshold of winning a second term wrote to a friend: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
You can’t campaign for a second term on that slogan, but Obama would do well to keep it in mind in thinking about the next four years.