Political Memo: Is the A.C.A. Rollout a Manageable Disaster?

In the past half century, the United States has had five presidents who were elected to two terms in the White House: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. (I’m not counting Lyndon Johnson, who was only voted in once.) All five won reëlection handily, but none of them enjoyed trouble-free second terms—and that’s putting it mildly. At this point in Nixon’s second four years, November of 1973, the Watergate scandal was raging. It took a bit longer for Reagan and Clinton to run into trouble. Eventually, though, both of their second terms were dragged down in embarrassing scandals: the Iran Contra affair and the Monica Lewinksy saga. Bush Jr., unlike his predecessors, managed to escape the attentions of an independent counsel or prosecutor, but the disastrous progress of the war in Iraq did so much damage to his reputation that, according to a new book by Peter Baker, of the Times, he got to the stage where he didn’t know how to react to good news....read more