Historian Discusses Second Presidential Term Curse
LEMON: Hello, I'm Don Lemon live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.</s>CHETRY: And I'm Kiran Chetry in for Kyra Phillips today. Well, they say love may be better the second time around, but not the White House. The historical precedence, of lame-duck presidents -- is there a second-term curse? You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. He has some explaining to do and he plans to do it. The fallout over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys keeps on growing today. And CNN has learned the man at the center of the controversy, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is headed to Capitol Hill. He's going to go later this week and next week to further explain the firings. He's facing calls from congressional Democrats to resign. They also want to know just how involved the White House was and they're threatening to subpoena top presidential aides, including Karl Rove. Meantime, questions over the controversy followed President Bush to Mexico today, here's what he had to say, and then we're going to hear what Attorney General Al Gonzales told "AMERICAN MORNING" and Miles O'Brien.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: I do have confidence in Attorney General Al Gonzales. I talked to him this morning. And we talked about his need to go up to Capitol Hill and make it very clear to members in both political parties why the Justice Department made the decisions it made -- make it very clear about the facts and he's right, mistakes were made, and I'm frankly not happy about them, because there is a lot of confusion over what really has been a customary practice by the presidents. U.S. attorneys and others serve at the pleasure of the president.</s>MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Do you feel it's time for you to step down?</s>ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL: That will be a decision for the president of the United States to make. I think if you look at the record of the department</s>O'BRIEN: Should you offer your resignation? Is it time for you to offer your resignation?</s>GONZALES: That is a decision for the president of the United States to make. I'm going to be focused on identifying what went wrong here, correcting those mistakes and focusing on working for the American people.</s>O'BRIEN: But the decision on whether to offer your resignation is yours, is it not?</s>GONZALES: I'm focused on doing my job.</s>CHETRY: The fired prosecutors say they were sacked for political reasons, even though Gonzales insists it was just part of an evaluation process.</s>LEMON: Well that prosecutor purge certainly isn't the only problem that President Bush is facing these days. And that leads us to ask a key question -- does the second term always mean huge problems for a presidency? It certainly seems that way for Mr. Bush and plenty of his predecessors.</s>WILLIAM CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.</s>RONALD REGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT: I'm not going to comment on that.</s>RICHARD NIXON, FORMER PRESIDENT: I'm not a crook. I earned everything I've got.</s>LEMON: Well, so how do we explain this so-called second-term curse? Let's ask historian Richard Shenkman, I saw you looking at those sound bites and kind of smiling a little bit. It is interesting to see that, isn't it?</s>RICHARD SHENKMAN, HISTORIAN: It is. And you know you could pick out a sound bite like that from virtually every second-term president in American history. And if they had television in the day of George Washington, you could have had a couple of sound bites like that from George Washington.</s>LEMON: Yes, Richard, here's what I want to ask you, though, and this is the reason we are asking this and talking about this today. Just in the past couple of months, we've had Scooter Libby, we've had Dick Cheney, we've had Rumsfeld resign, we've had Alberto Gonzales just recently, Peter Pace yesterday, Walter Reed just, you know, in the last couple of weeks. Is this unusual?</s>SHENKMAN: It's not unusual. It's referred to by historians as the second-term jinx. And it's for good reason that we talk about that. It's because every second-term president runs into this. And there are a couple factors. One is simply that over the course of a number of years, if you stay in office long enough, your enemies build up, every year you get more enemies and usually fewer friends, and eventually they're all coming after you. And after the reelection you're a lame duck under the constitution, so what happens is, they feel free to go after you without worrying that you are really going to have enough clout to go back after them.</s>LEMON: OK, but you know what Richard? It seems like, you know Nixon had Watergate, then there was Iran/Contra during the Regan years, but then it seems like there was one big issue. This seems like a couple big issues all happening in sequence, one right after the other, right after the other.</s>SHENKMAN: Well, what's also going on here is that you have the Democrats taking control of Congress. For six years the president basically got a free ride from the Congress, because it was for most of that time it was in Republican hands, and this is also true of presidents. Most presidents come in with both houses of Congress being from their own party, and somewhere along the way they wind of losing one or both houses. And that changes the dynamics. President Bush has lost both houses. That changes the dynamic.</s>LEMON: Alright, maybe I am missing something. I sort of understand what you're saying, but because there's a Democratic Congress, what does that have to do with the administration and corruption or lack of taking care of troops who are sick? What does that have to do with the Democrats? I don't understand that part.</s>SHENKMAN: Well, if the Democrats weren't in power right now on all of these scandals that have erupted over the last few months, you wouldn't be hearing very much about them. The Walter Reed scandal, certainly this attorney general scandal, the Republicans would have been able to shove under the carpet and basically make go away because you wouldn't have officials being subpoenaed, brought up to Capitol Hill, made to answer questions --</s>LEMON: Got it. You're talking about people holding their feet to the fire, and keeping them honest, as we say here on CNN. What about falling so close to the president himself, all of these issues seem to be, you know, falling really close, not just the administration, but really close to the president himself. Is that unusual?</s>SHENKMAN: Well, go back to Watergate, very close to Richard Nixon, the Ram Contra (ph), very close to Ronald Reagan, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, can't get any closer than that. No, they always do tend to come close to the president. If they're not close to them, then you know what, you don't hear too much about them.</s>LEMON: Yes, so discipline as well. So, I would expect that we would see many more to come so, to you, you're say saying, you know what? Hey listen, this is just the second-term jinx that always happens once you're a president. It doesn't have to happen, but it somehow seems to, don't know why.</s>SHENKMAN: Well, we do know why, and for some of the reasons I already outlined. Also, in addition, there's a couple of other reasons. One is that when presidents get re-elected, they tend to have what I call hubris, presidential hubris. And what that does is it forces them or leads them, inclines them to over-reach. President Bush over-reached with Social Security. He got slammed hard by the country, and that weakened him politically, making him more susceptible to further attacks.</s>LEMON: Yes, I see your point, kind of, as usual thank you so much, you always do a great job. Thank you so much, Richard Shenkman.</s>SHENKMAN: Alright, thank you.</s>CHETRY: Well, punks, bullies, all of you beware, because the next little old lady you try to pick on may be ready to rumble.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you can't make it the other other way, then you've got to fight. We've got feet, we've got fingers, we've got teeth, use them.</s>CHETRY: She was talking smack, too, on top of that.</s>LEMON: Yes, a lot of trash.</s>CHETRY: How about that? Well, ahead in the the NEWSROOM, a granny with some gumption, not to mention a mean left hook.