Second-term curse

File:Assassination of U.S. President William McKinley by Achille Beltrame; 1901.jpg

An illustration of the assassination of William McKinley, an event which happened in his second term

The second-term curse is the perceived tendency of second term U.S. presidents to be less successful than their first terms.

According to the curse, the second terms of U.S. presidents have usually been plagued by a major scandal, policy inertia, some sort of catastrophe, or other problems. There have been twenty-one U.S. presidents who have served a second term, each of whom has faced difficulties attributed to the curse. The legend behind the second-term curse is that after Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the de facto second term limit by running for third and fourth terms, the ghost of George Washington might have put a curse on any president who seeks a second term. This legend notwithstanding, several presidents who served prior to this, including Washington and Roosevelt themselves, were plagued by problems in their second term more serious than in their first.

Whether this perceived tendency is real is a subject of dispute: for example, political statistician Nate Silver, after analyzing presidential approval ratings for Harry S. Truman through Barack Obama, did find that approval ratings were lower on average during second terms, but he also found a variety of other reasons to explain those ratings, such as regression toward the mean, and he concluded that "the idea of the second-term curse is sloppy as an analytical concept". In addition, political writer Michael Barone cited several presidents who had successful second terms, and wrote that "second-term problems resulted more often from the failure to adjust to changed circumstances and unanticipated challenges". Conversely, a 2013 report in The Economist has said that the existence of the second-term curse is supported by data. The report stated that each of the eleven second terms served from the beginning of the Theodore Roosevelt administration to the end of the George W. Bush administration were less economically prosperous than their respective president's first term, save for the second terms of Truman, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. However, these findings could be due to the effect of survivorship bias; presidents who are elected for a second term are more likely to have had a good first term, making their second term look worse by comparison.

Presidents of the curse

President		Second term	Attributed event(s)
George Washington	George Washington	1793–1797	Ramifications of the French Revolutionary Wars Controversy over his signing of the Jay Treaty Fatigue due to political infighting
Thomas Jefferson	Thomas Jefferson	1805–1809	Burr conspiracy Embargo Act of 1807
James Madison	James Madison	1813–1817	Burning of Washington
James Monroe	James Monroe	1821–1825	Congressional rejection of his anti-slavery efforts
Andrew Jackson	Andrew Jackson	1833–1837	Events in the Bank War which laid the groundwork for the Panic of 1837
Abraham Lincoln	Abraham Lincoln	1865	His assassination
Ulysses S. Grant	Ulysses S. Grant	1873–1877	Panic of 1873 Failure of his Reconstruction efforts to uphold the rights of Southern African-Americans Numerous scandals
Grover Cleveland	Grover Cleveland	1893–1897	Personal struggles with oral cancer Panic of 1893
William McKinley	William McKinley	1901	His assassination
Theodore Roosevelt	Theodore Roosevelt	1905–1909	The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Woodrow Wilson	Woodrow Wilson	1917–1921	U.S. entry into World War I Unpopularity stemming from his refusal to accept reservations to the Treaty of Versailles, leading to the Senate's rejection of the treaty Failure to get the U.S. to join the League of Nations Suffered a stroke Controversy over the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Calvin Coolidge	Calvin Coolidge	1925–1929	The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Franklin D. Roosevelt	Franklin D. Roosevelt	1937–1941	Failure of the "court-packing plan" The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Harry S. Truman	Harry S. Truman	1949–1953	Korean War Controversy over his relief of General Douglas MacArthur
Dwight D. Eisenhower	Dwight D. Eisenhower	1957–1961	Overcoat scandal 1960 U-2 incident The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Lyndon B. Johnson	Lyndon B. Johnson	1965–1969	Vietnam War Reaction to the Great Society Urban riots and the Kerner Commission Loss of Wisconsin primary to Eugene McCarthy and his withdrawal from the 1968 presidential election The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Richard Nixon	Richard Nixon	1973–1974	Watergate scandal and subsequent resignation The U.S. economy was not as strong as it was during his first term.
Ronald Reagan	Ronald Reagan	1985–1989	Iran–Contra affair
Bill Clinton	Bill Clinton	1997–2001	Paula Jones lawsuit Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment Pardon controversy
George W. Bush	George W. Bush	2005–2009	Failure of Social Security reform Hurricane Katrina Indictment of Scooter Libby during the Plame affair 2008 financial crisis
Barack Obama	Barack Obama	2013–2017	Edward Snowden leaks United States federal government shutdown of 2013 IRS targeting controversy David Petraeus' affair and guilty plea Failed Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland.

See also

• Curse of Tippecanoe
• Six-year itch