Obama\'s Second Term: Not Necessarily Cursed

WASHINGTON â€" Second-term U.S. presidents encounter political turbulence, their poll ratings plummet as the public sours. Right

Wrong.

In my latest Letter from Washington, I lay out who in Washington believes Barack Obama has a chance of actually accomplishing something in his second term and who doesn’t â€" and why.

(Technically, Mr. Obama has already begun his second term. He was sworn in on January 20 before noon Eastern time, per the Constitution, though the public inauguration is only at 12 noon today.)

But the historical record is more nuanced than the conventional wisdom that second terms are doomed to end in failure or scandal.

Over the past 60 years, there have been five re-elected U.S. presidents: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Two fit the conentional notion: Mr. Nixon, whose ratings fell through the floor when he became ensnared in Watergate criminality, was eventually forced to resign. Mr. Bush’s second term failed after his major miscalculation in trying to partially privatize Social Security and his administration’s woeful response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The other two-termers went out on a high, with approval ratings of 60 percent or higher. Even with political setbacks, President Eisenhower maintained his status as an above-the-fray figure that he had acquired since serving as the supreme allied commander in World War II.

The re-elected President Reagan had a rough first couple of years with a flawed new chief of staff, the former Wall Street executive Donald Regan, and the Iran-contra scandal. However, led by his Treasury secretary, Jim Baker, he was able to lead the way to sweeping tax reform. And encouraged by his wife, Nancy, and Secretary of State George Shultz, Mr. Reagan signed a nuclear-arms reduc! tion tready with the Soviet Union. He was enormously popular when he left office.

So was Bill Clinton in 2001, with a backlash against the political effort by House Republicans to impeach him for lying about an affair. Right before he left office, the Gallup poll reported that President Clinton had a 66 percent approval rating. Within weeks, his popularity plummeted when news surfaced of his final-hours pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich. Ever resilient, he came back and today there is no more popular political figure in the U.S.

Is 2013 the New 1913

BEIJING â€" It’s a provocative idea â€" and a disturbing one. The world in 2013 looks “eerily” like the world in 1913, writes Charles Emmerson, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.

Substitute the United States for the United Kingdom, and China for Germany, and the parallels are fairly clear.

“The leading power of the age is in relative decline, beset by political crisis at home and by steadily eroding economic prowess,” Mr. Emmerson writes in “Eve of Disaster,” a piece in Foreign Policy magazine.

“Rising powers are jostling for position in the four corners of the world, some seeking a new place for themselves within the current global order, others questioning its very legitimacy. Democracy and despotism are locked in uneasy competition.

“A world economy is interconnected as never before by flows of money, trade, and people, and by the nprecedented spread of new, distance-destroying technologies. A global society, perhaps even a global moral consciousness, is emerging as a result. Small-town America rails at the excessive power of Wall Street. Asia is rising once again. And, yes, there’s trouble in the Middle East,” he writes, asking: “Sound familiar”

Yes, perhaps especially in Asia, where the rise of China is being felt strongly.

Consider this: In Hong Kong over the weekend, Shotaro Yachi, the foreign policy adviser to the Japanese prime minister, accused China of “breaching the rule of international order” (his remarks were delivered by a former Japanese official, Takujiro Hamada, The South China Morning Post reported).

“You will be a superpower â€" much feared but not much liked,” Mr. Yachi warned China at the third Sino-U.S. Colloquium, organized by the China Energy Fund Committ! ee.

China is asserting territorial claims by force, said Mr. Yachi, referring to Beijing’s actions at the Diaoyu Islands, which Japan calls the Senkakus and which are claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan.

“I should like to ask you: Is this a China you want to show to the world” he said. “Is this a China that your children will be proud of”

A retired People’s Liberation Army major general, Pan Zhenqiang, now an adviser to the Chinese government, characterized Mr. Yachi’s statement as “very rude and arrogant” and warned Tokyo to treat China as an enemy at its peril, The Post reported.

Jostling nations, a shifting global order: sound familiar

Deeply involved in the quarrel is the United States, which has a security treaty with Japan.

On Sunday, China harshly criticized the U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for presenting what it said was a distorted picture of its dispute with Japan over the islands in the East China Sea, as my colleague Jane Perlez wrote.

In Asia, the escalation is, arguably, increasingly reflected in national politics, with the December election of Japan’s nationalist and conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a sign of a rightward swing driven at least in part by fear of China, analysts say.

In fact, China’s rise is “distorting” domestic politics among its neighbors, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, as they respond to its growing challenge, said Mark Harrison, a politics and culture specialist at the University of Tasmania.

In Japan, “a dimension of the right-wing resurgence is due to anxiety about China,” Mr. Harrison said in a telephone interview.

Just how far that resurgence is going needs to be noted. Consider the following pieces of information about Mr. Abe’s conservative cabinet, according to The Economist. Each is guaranteed to infuriate other Asian countries with memories of Japan’s World War II brutality in the region, amid feelings in some quarters that Japan never really apologized enough.

“Fourteen in the cabinet belong to the League for Going to Worship Together at Yasukuni, a controversial Tokyo shrine that honors leaders executed for war crimes,” The Economist notes. “Thirteen support Nihon Kaigi, a nationalist think-tank that advocates a return to ‘traditional values’ and rejects Japan’s ‘apology diplomacy’ for its wartime misdeeds. Nine belong to a parliamentary association that wants the teaching of history in schools to give a better gloss to Japan’s militarist era.”

Sound familiar

In his essay, Mr. Emmerson notes that “the United States in 2013 may not be a perfect analogue for Britain in 1913 (nor Chinain 2013 a perfect analogue for Germany in 1913).” But, he says, “The world of 1913 â€" brilliant, dynamic, interdependent â€" offers a warning.”

“In 2013, at a time of similar global flux, the biggest mistake we could possibly make is to assume that the operating system of our own world will continue indefinitely, that all we need to do is stroll into the future, and that the future will inevitably be what we want it to be,” he writes. “Those comforting times are over. We need to prepare ourselves for a much rougher ride ahead.”

Paris and London, Snowy, More Beautiful and More Treacherous

Snow hit Paris and London for the second and third day, respectively, as locals and tourists reveled in the wonder of winter that usually bypasses these European capitals. But travel headaches afflicted both cities, as mere inches of snow shut down both roads and runways. After repeated years of cold and precipitation, at what point will we have to stop calling these European snowfalls “unusual” And when will European airports and transportation authorities start greeting winter with salt and snow plows for what may be the new normal

Paris and London, Snowy, More Beautiful and More Treacherous

Snow hit Paris and London for the second and third day, respectively, as locals and tourists reveled in the wonder of winter that usually bypasses these European capitals. But travel headaches afflicted both cities, as mere inches of snow shut down both roads and runways. After repeated years of cold and precipitation, at what point will we have to stop calling these European snowfalls “unusual” And when will European airports and transportation authorities start greeting winter with salt and snow plows for what may be the new normal