(The editor of AmericanHeritage.com asked for our thoughts on why Presidents’ second terms so often go badly, and whether it has anything to do with the 22nd Amendment, which limits them to two terms.)
Several factors are involved. The first is simple regression toward the mean. To get reelected, you have to have good luck in your first term. During the second term, chances are your luck will be merely average, so it will look like you did a worse job. (This also explains why the Red Sox didn’t win the World Series this year.) A related factor, similar in concept but less random, is the business cycle. If the economy goes well in your first term, it will probably get worse sometime during the second, and people will blame it on you.
Often thought to have been a weak President, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or political fallout.
Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington.
In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.
Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.
A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.
During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.
Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.
The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.
Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.
Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.
When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.
Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.