Birds on the Brain

As a general rule, second terms suck. Jefferson resorted to the embargo and Madison got the White House house burned down. Monroe’s Era of Good Feeling pretty much ended when he got re-elected and his entire cabinet started jockeying to succeed him while old Andy Jackson was down in Tennessee, howling at the moon. More recent examples are even less promising. Nixon had Watergate. Saint Reagan had Iran Contra, and was very likely a symptomatic Alzheimer’s patient for most of his second term. Clinton got impeached and, amazingly, George Bush managed to be an even bigger cock-up in his second term than he was in his first. A re-elected president gets (maybe) six months to govern, and then it’s time for all hands to run for president again. Ask James Monroe how well that usually works out.