The Six-Year Itch

By Charlie Cook, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, historian Joseph Ellis said on "Face the Nation" that second term presidencies were about ducks, chickens and bubbles.

	In examining what happened last year and what is occurring this year, it will help determine whether the historical second-term midterm election, dubbed the "six-year itch" phenomenon, occurs in November.

He said second-term "lame duck" presidents have little power to enforce party discipline on Capitol Hill, making it much more difficult to win legislative victories. Furthermore, chickens come home to roost, meaning decisions, policies and events from the first term come back to haunt second-term presidents. And that after four years or more in the White House, presidents and staffers tend to live in bubbles and their decisions often reflect a detachment from the outside world, which can have serious political consequences.

One or more of these factors has plagued every second-term president.

The inability of a second-termer to enforce party discipline has been evident in the newspapers over the last week or so, with some Republican members of Congress questioning the legality and wisdom of the NSA eavesdropping program and a committee issuing a report highly critical of the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

It is doubtful that this would have happened in the first term, when Republican senators and representatives were working to get President Bush re-elected and were usually loath to directly criticize the president or the White House.

Today there is a realization that every Republican in the House and 14 Republican senators will have their names on the ballot this November, while the president's name will never be on one again.

The decision to go to war with Iraq, the controversy over NSA surveillance, the ill-fated Social Security plan, the CIA leak case, the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the handling of Hurricane Katrina all are examples of one or more of Ellis' ducks, chickens and bubbles coming true.

The point of all of this is not to dump on the White House, but to demonstrate that an examination of history reveals patterns and certain behavioral tendencies that emerge in presidencies and in the members of Congress of the president's party at various stages of their terms. None of this is unusual or unexpected.

The relevance in examining what happened last year and what is occurring this year is that it will help determine whether the historical second-term midterm election, dubbed the "six-year itch" phenomenon, occurs in November.

In February 1958, at this point in his presidency, President Eisenhower had a Gallup job approval rating of 54 percent. In November it was 52 percent, and Republicans lost 13 Senate and 48 House seats.

In February 1966, in the sixth year of the Kennedy/Johnson administration, President Johnson had a 56 percent Gallup approval rating. Going into November, it was 44 percent, and Democrats lost four Senate seats and 47 House seats.

President Nixon's approval rating in February 1974 was 27 percent. After Nixon left office, President Ford went into the midterm election with a 54 percent approval rating, having dropped 21 points after his pardon of Nixon. In the wake of Watergate, the GOP lost five seats in the Senate and 48 in the House.

At this point in his tenure, President Reagan had a 64 percent approval rating. He was only 1 point lower going into the 1986 midterm election when the GOP lost only five House seats and eight Senate seats. Neither loss was terribly significant that year.

In truth, 1986 was a reaction or correction. A large number of very weak GOP Senate incumbents who rode into office in the 1980 Reagan tidal wave were promptly washed back out to sea when they came up for re-election six years later. Worth noting is that the Iran-Contra scandal broke a day after the midterm election; in the very next Gallup Poll, Reagan's approval rating plummeted to 47 percent.

President Clinton's approval rating at this point was 66 percent. It was precisely the same going into the 1998 midterm election, which explains why Democrats actually gained five seats in the House and broke even in the Senate.

Clearly, with just one open Republican Senate seat and just five truly vulnerable GOP Senate seats -- not to mention several highly vulnerable Democratic Senate seats, few Republican open seats and few incumbents seriously challenged in vulnerable GOP districts -- the potential for losses of the magnitude of many previous six-year elections is negligible.

But presidents with job approval ratings in the 40s and 50s, as opposed to the 60s, have had real losses, and for President Bush, who is currently at 43 percent, that has to be sobering.

While GOP exposure to those historic levels of losses might not be real, they remain vulnerable to some of the same dynamics and reoccurring patterns that have contributed to past losses. What happens over the next nine months will determine whether expected GOP losses stay under or go over the magic six seats in the Senate or 15 seats in the House that turn over control of those chambers.