Coming to Terms with Second Terms

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

RIGHT STUFF Senator Santorum was among those at a party thrown by the National Review at Turtle Bay Bar & Lounge on Monday.


The National Review’s kind of people are in town this week, and approximately 400 showed up at the venue, which is partially owned by offspring of the New York Conservative Party chairman, Michael Long.


Several sported patriotic gear. Onenationalreview.comp in stated “Kerry Is #1” while in smaller print a parenthetical addendum stated “Senate Liberal.” AT-shirt spotted bore a silk-screened silhouette of President Reagan; another featured an image of Che Guevara in an ominous rifle crosshair.


Seen were David Frum, who had come from a speaking engagement at a panel called “The Effects of Conservative Books on Political Culture” hosted by American Compass; publisher Ezra Levant of Western Standard, a new conservative magazine based in Canada, and Jonathan Leaf, who is writing a history of 20thcentury theater, and whose play “Pushkin” will have a reading on September 20, and public relations powerhouse Alexandra Preate.


National Review editor Rich Lowry greeted attendees while a phalanx of NR staff was spotted nearby, including publisher and chief executive Edward Capano, White House correspondent Byron York, managing editor Jay Nordlinger (who also writes for The New York Sun), Kerry blogger James Geraghty, assistant publisher Kevin Longstreet, Washington editor Kate O’Beirne, NRO editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg, senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru, national political reporter John Miller, and National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez.


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ENTERPRISING PANEL American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein and Brookings Institution senior fellow Thomas Mann stood together yesterday at two lecterns with a panel of guests seated between them. Messrs. Ornstein and Mann moderated a discussion called “How Would George W. Bush Govern in a Second Term?” at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.


Mr. Ornstein told the audience that he had moderated a panel at the Democratic National Convention on how Senator Kerry would govern as president. A third panel will take place on September 29 in Miami. Wagner School dean and Professor Ellen Schall introduced the program and offered greetings.


David Gergen recalled how when he was originally informed that Messrs. Mann and Ornstein were moderating, he said, “I don’t care who’s on the panel. I’ll do it.” Mr. Gergen set the stage by placing the discussion of second term presidents in historical perspective.


“The tales of the past,” he said, “are cautionary for a second Bush term.”


“Second terms tend to be less productive and more anguished” than first terms, he said. Mr. Gergen spoke of four characteristics. Firstly, the president may be overcome by hubris, a feature observed by political scientist Richard Neustadt. Mr. Gergen said Franklin Roosevelt’s court packing was an example, and that it helped to mark the beginning of the end for the New Deal.


Secondly, the party in power tends to lose seats in the sixth year when an “accumulation of ills” is felt. Third, there is a tendency for scandal: Reagan and Iran-Contra, Nixon and Watergate, and Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair. Thirdly, second terms tend to be marked by flagging energy, Mr. Gergen said, since “What you came to office to do, you did in the first term.” He did offer the counterexample of Reagan achieving tax reform in 1986. Lastly, staff and Cabinet members burn out or turn over. Mr. Gergen pointed to the example of Michael Deaver, James Baker, and Donald Regan during the Reagan administration.


In a qualifier, Mr. Gergen added, “History is a guide, but not a guarantee.”


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PRESIDENTIAL POWER The Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy at the New School University hosted panels yesterday under the general heading “Urban Conversations: Where Red Meets Blue.” Talks featured speakers on urban dilemmas that transcend partisan divisions.


ABC News “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos moderated a session whose panelists included Pew Research Center for the People and the Press director Andrew Kohut and Senator Alexander. Mr. Stephanopoulos said he had held a focus group in Columbus, Ohio, in which “the room exploded” when immigration was addressed and participants demanded tough policies. Mr. Kohut said that hostility to immigration is “much lower” in America than in Europe.


Seen in the audience were John Tepper Marlin, transportation activist Roger Herz, and Henry Stern, a former New York City parks commissioner.


The question-and-answer portion of the morning session commenced with Mr. Stephanopoulos turning to New School University’s president, Bob Kerrey, in the front row. “I guess Senator Kerrey gets to go first,” Mr. Stephanopoulos said, to audience laughter, “because he’s the president.”


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CALENDAR JOTTINGS Conservative titan William F. Buckley Jr. will sign copies of his book “Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography” at Barnes & Noble Rockefeller Center at 1 p.m. on September 23.


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SUBTITLE SLIP-UP In the closed-captioning of Monday’s RNC coverage on CSPAN, the station spelled out the lyrics to Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “New York, NewYork,” which played after Mayor Giuliani’s speech. Amusingly, instead of the song lyrics “these vagabond shoes,” the caption read “having a bond shoes.”


The New York Sun

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