04 December 2008
Second-Term Transitions
by John P. Burke
The odds are fairly high that a sitting president who is eligible for a second term will need to prepare for such an experience. Second terms present new challenges. These are not insurmountable, and some presidents have done better than others. As with a successful first term, effective transition planning is needed.
John P. Burke, a professor at the University of Vermont, specializes in American politics, the American presidency, and ethics and public affairs. He has published a number of articles on presidential transitions and two books: Becoming President: The Bush Transition 2000-2003 and Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice, which focuses on the Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton transitions and early presidencies.
While much attention has focused on the transition to office of newly elected presidents, sitting presidents who have been successful in gaining re-election face an equally consequential challenge in preparing for a second term. Of the 19 U.S. presidents who have served since 1900, eight have been re-elected (including William McKinley and Richard M. Nixon, who did not serve out their full second terms). In addition, four vice presidents who assumed the presidency were successful in gaining election in their own right (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson). So the odds are fairly high that a sitting president, eligible to serve another term, will need to prepare for a new term in office.
In some sense, second-term transitions present a less daunting challenge. Sitting presidents do not face the difficulty of hurriedly trying to fill key White House, cabinet, and sub-cabinet positions in the roughly 75 days from Election Day in November to Inauguration Day on January 20. The situation with respect to departments and agencies is especially advantageous. Present appointees can stay on their jobs if the president so prefers, or they can be replaced in a time frame of the president’s choosing. This is no small advantage. Most importantly, there is no requirement that cabinet and sub-cabinet members be reconfirmed by the U.S. Senate.
By contrast, absent the “shadow government” of many parliamentary systems, newly elected presidents must move very quickly in selecting and then nominating members of the cabinet. Fortunately, the Senate usually acts speedily to confirm those nominees. Filling sub-cabinet positions is more problematic: The time from presidential selection to confirmation now averages some eight months. Thus, while a new administration is not fully staffed for some considerable length of time, a sitting president can rely on fuller horsepower in the early months of a second term.
Less than a handful of White House staff positions require Senate confirmation, yet here, too, sitting presidents seem advantaged. They do not face the time constraint of quickly filling the some 1,500 to 2,000 positions that are now part of the Executive Office of the President. Skilled and valued staff members can be retained or promoted. Most importantly, there is not the steep learning curve that the fresh staff of a newly elected presidency generally faces. There is built-in institutional memory from one term to the next that is generally absent when the presidency changes hands.
Differing Patterns
Given the greater latitude in making personnel changes and absent the press of time, it is not surprising that sitting presidents have varied considerably in what they have done in their transitions to second term. For Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served two terms as president -- from 1953 to 1961 -- continuity was the order of the day. No major changes took place at the top of the White House staff at the beginning of Eisenhower’s second term (save for the return of Robert Cutler as national security advisor). Three of the then 10 cabinet members would eventually leave, although that process occurred much later in 1957.
Following his 1972 election for a second term, Richard Nixon demanded the resignation of every political appointee in his administration; change in the cabinet was significant, the staff less so. Of the then 11 cabinet slots, eight were filled with new members; by the end of the year, as the Watergate scandal took its toll, two more were replaced for a total of 10. But chief aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman -- until Watergate caught up with them -- were kept on, as was Henry Kissinger as the national security advisor.
Under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, change in both the cabinet and staff during their second terms was significant. Both had new chiefs of staff and national security advisors (Reagan later in 1985); seven of the 13 cabinet members were new under Reagan, eight of 14 for Clinton. For George W. Bush, although there was the normal attrition in White House staff through the first term, several of the major staff members remained in place: Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr.; Communications Chief Dan Bartlett; Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolten; and senior adviser Karl Rove. In the cabinet, there were nine (out of now 15) new faces.
Yet sitting presidents face a number of similar challenges as they consider who will serve them during a second term:
• Many of the best appointees of the first term may be ready to move on.
• The pool of new prospects may be less talented or less willing to serve.
• Those continuing in office or promoted to higher positions may have become more allegiant to their department’s interests and needs rather than the president’s agenda.
• Political pressure on appointments from constituency groups may be greater and more organized than that faced on initially taking office.
Political Difficulties
Despite the advantage of a potentially more leisurely pace in filling key positions, sitting presidents face their own unique set of challenges: lessened political power, increased political opposition, less favorable media attention, and more modest presidential achievements in their second terms. The term limits of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted in 1951, has especially weaken the perceived political strength of post-Truman presidents: Talk of a “lame duck” now begins right after their re-election. The problem is immediately compounded if the president’s election win was a narrow one, as it was for Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Bill Clinton in 1996 (both at 49.2 percent) and for George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7 percent).
Even if their own electoral victory is impressive, second-term presidents are usually handicapped by the failure of the election results to produce a decisive win for their party in congressional elections. In fact, it is likely that congressional losses will occur or that there will be a split result in House of Representatives and Senate races: Woodrow Wilson in 1916 lost 21 members of his Democratic Party in the House and three in the Senate; Eisenhower in 1956 (-2 House, 0 Senate); Nixon in 1972 (+12 House, -2 Senate); Reagan in 1984 (+14 House, -2 Senate); and Clinton in 1996 (+9 House, -2 Senate). Three of these presidents even achieved significant popular vote margins: Eisenhower (57.4 percent), Nixon (60.7 percent), and Reagan (58.8 percent). Despite George W. Bush’s somewhat narrow victory in 2004, his party did manage to gain seven seats in the House and four in the Senate. But since the early 20th century, only Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 had a significant electoral win (60.8 percent) and seat gains for his party in both houses of Congress (+11 House, +6 Senate).
Interestingly, for the vice presidents who became president and were later elected in their own right, the picture is less bleak: Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 (56.4 percent, +44 House, Senate then not popularly elected); Calvin Coolidge in 1924 (54 percent, +22 House, +4 Senate); Harry Truman in 1948 (49.6 percent, +75 House, +9 Senate); and Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (61.1 percent, +36 House, +2 Senate).
Policy Implications
This general disconnect between presidential and congressional election results makes it difficult for most presidents to claim an electoral “mandate” of their policies that Congress should enact, even when the president’s margin of victory is significant. Nor is there the political “honeymoon” period that newly elected presidents experience in their early months in office. As a result, second-term presidents must choose their legislative agenda carefully: Fewer White House proposals are likely to be enacted, more political compromise and concessions will be needed, and opposition is likely to be greater as a lame duck is perceived as ever lamer. Second-term presidents also face the difficulty that some of their preferred legislation will be leftovers from the first term. The probability of new and ambitious proposals being enacted is not high.
Second-term presidents also must act quickly in securing passage of legislation. Midterm elections bring even more political bad news. Since 1906, no second-term president has had his party gain seats in either the House or the Senate with one exception, and that only for the House: Bill Clinton in 1998 (+5 House, 0 Senate).
In thinking about what they will do legislatively during a second term, presidents would thus be wise to bear in mind that:
• First-term presidencies generally focus on domestic policy priorities, but building a winning coalition on domestic matters, especially if they are controversial or divisive, is likely to be more difficult in a second term.
• Second-term presidencies are likely to be more successful in the foreign policy arena, even though there is less congressional deference than in the past.
• Re-election often generates hubris and overconfidence; presidents may be inclined to overreach (Franklin Roosevelt’s Supreme Court packing plan) or make costly mistakes (Nixon’s response to Watergate; Iran-Contra for Reagan).
• If ambitious legislation is proposed, it must occur early in the second term; as a lame duck, the president’s power position declines over time, his party’s strength in Congress will likely lessen, and congressional opposition will likely increase.
Overall, then, securing re-election is a personal triumph for a sitting president. But a personal triumph is not necessarily a successful presidential triumph as presidents continue on office. Second terms present new challenges. These are not insurmountable, and some presidents have done better than others. As with a successful first term, effective transition planning is needed. But what makes for success the second time around is different in many respects. Sitting presidents are wise to recognize the importance of transition planning, but they must also understand how that task now differs for their second term.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
