The Pendragon's Hall

There is a positive diatribe going on about the lack of "political capital" President Bush has to spend in his last term. Media pundits are falling all over themselves to predict that were an election held today Bush would be soundly defeated. Even normally sane commentators like the Bull Moose have taken up the cry. The credibility problem these people have is that many of them were saying the same thing in November of 2004 when Bush registered a majority of the largest electoral turnout in American history. But even those who have recently joined the crew ignore the precedent of history. A President's second term is almost always fraught with unpopularity and controversy. Washington's second term saw both the Whiskey Rebellion and the furor over the Jay Treaty; Jefferson's second term, after the glories of his first, was an umitigated disaster; Madison's second term began in war; Jackson's saw the advent of the second-worst financial panic in US history; Lincoln and McKinley were assassinated in their second term; TR lost even his popularity; Wilson's slogan "He Kept Us Out of War" was drastically revised and his foreign policy plans all went in the toilet; FDR got slapped back in his ambitious social program by the United States Supreme Court; Truman became the most reviled President up to that time; Johnson started the war in Vietnam; Nixon was forced out of office; Reagan had Iran-Contra; Clinton was impeached. Get the idea? Even Carter--wait, Carter didn't have a second term did he? My bad. The problem is, after the excitement and euphoria of a popular election, reality reasserts itself. In Latin America, leaders govern exclusively on the basis of personality and so a popular leader maintains himself in office without ever actually confronting the world outside. All he needs to do is be charismatic enough to sway the populace. In the United States, it works differently. We calm down from the rhetoric of the campaign trail and expect our leaders to actually produce. And we are disappointed if they don't. Fortunately for Bush, all of the above are still considered decent or even great Presidents. This is because when the dust has settled, the American people look back and take their Presidents all for all, good and bad. This is different again, from Latin America, whose unpopular leaders will only be rehabilitated by western scholars trying to be objective. We still prize objectivity in this country.