Remarkable how the expectations of Americans seem so modest compared to what they were when we were young. Today, the minimalist slogan, “General Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead!” is enough to get you re-elected president.
Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates.
FDR’s began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP’s nomination of “the barefoot boy from Wall Street,” Wendell Willkie.
What can be called Harry Truman’s second term was a disaster.
In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb and China fell to Mao. In 1950, the Rosenbergs were convicted as atomic spies for Stalin and North Korea invaded the South, igniting a three-year war Truman could not win or end.
He lost the New Hampshire primary in 1952 to Sen. Estes Kefauver, dropped out and saw would-be successor Adlai Stevenson crushed by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, as Republicans captured Congress. Truman left with the lowest approval rating of a president before or since.
In his second term, Ike did better, but suffered a GOP defeat in 1958, saw Fidel Castro seize Cuba in January of 1959, and had the U-2 shot down by Russia in May 1960 and his Paris summit blown up by Nikita Khrushchev, who berated Ike to his face. His vice president, Richard Nixon, then lost the White House.
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