Barack Obama and the dreaded curse of the second term

It's called the “second term curse”. Every recent president fortunate enough to win re-election has been unfortunate enough to have to deal with some sort of scandal, either real or fabricated.

President Obama's second term agenda hit a brick wall last month when a series of these so-called scandals took over the airwaves, as the media filled the gap left by some slow news days.

Just over four months into Obama's second term, he is mired in three scandals that threaten his ability to govern effectively for the remainder of his time in office, or at least until the 2014 mid-term elections.

Obama is facing his toughest time in office after the never-ending criticism of how his administration handled the Benghazi attacks, the IRS' targeting of Tea Party groups, and the Department of Justice's probe into the AP journalists' phone records. The focus has shifted away from the broader policy debates that the president spoke of in his second inaugural address in January.

But do the recent events that the Republicans are calling scandals really rise to the level of scandals, and is Obama really becoming mired in the dreaded “second term curse”?

Historically, Obama seems to be falling into the same pattern as his recent predecessors. Watergate led Richard Nixon all the way to his political downfall. Ronald Reagan got caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal, causing historians to put an asterisk next to his presidency. Bill Clinton made Monica Lewinsky famous, causing a media firestorm that practically overshadowed everything else he did. George W. Bush showed his ineptitude by screwing up the response to Hurricane Katrina and leading us into the Iraq War after false reports that weapons of mass destruction existed.

Obama surely has studied the history of past two-term presidents, and learned that the best thing to do at the slightest hint of a scandal is to get out in front of the story. The Obama administration seems to be playing catch-up to events that, on closer inspection, don't rise to the level of Watergate, Iran-Contra, or WMDs in Iraq.

The Obama administration should have been prepared for the Republican Party to take things one step beyond obstructionism. The GOP's first term agenda was to defeat Obama. The second term, as history has shown, is the time that the opposing party does whatever it takes to pin a scandal on the incumbent president.

The problem with the current trio of events labeled scandals by the GOP and the conservative media is that they don't pack the same punch as Nixon's Watergate, for example.

How many hours of non-stop reporting about the IRS can we watch? The AP phone records scandal? I'm bored already. And Benghazi seems to be more about what it was originally: an attack on Hillary Clinton, and her likely 2016 presidential run. The Benghazi story may or may not fizzle out by 2016, but either way, it could bypass Obama and land on Clinton. But most Americans are as bored as I am about Benghazi, and I suspect that most Republicans don't know where it is.

All of this could have been predicted. The Republicans will do anything to discredit the president, and the longer a president is in office, the more executive-branch decisions cross his desk. With every passing month, it becomes more likely that at least one of his many decisions will turn out to be wrong, ill-advised or worse. By the second term, even the best, luckiest and smartest president will have made an incorrect decision.

Obama has made mistakes, judgment calls and taken risks. The killing of Osama bin Laden could have taken a very bad turn. The attack in Benghazi did turn out badly, as did the IRS debacle and the AP phone record incident. But were these events under the direction of President Obama, and was there a cover-up by the president? If you listen to Republican leaders, Obama is guilty of covering up just about everything. It doesn't seem so long ago that the president was involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up his real birthplace, Kenya.

All of this leads back to the question: Is Obama a victim of the “second term curse”? No, he's a victim of “second term Republican obstructionism”.

Michael Jackson's Fans Aren't Ready To Say Goodbye

A day after his death, Michael Jackson is getting the outpouring of attention he craved so much as his career sputtered in the later part of his life. He died just weeks before he was to start a comeback tour to help resurrect his career and pay his bills. Today, however, in terms of music sales and popularity, "The Gloved One" is "The Only One," according to Amazon.com. History is in the making, as Jackson accounts for the top 15 CD's and the top 7 DVD's, and his music is the most requested, most downloaded and most shared on any Internet site anywhere. According to Amazon.com, his sales are now running 721 times what they were running just before his death. Just yesterday he was alive, an eccentric oddity trying to make a comeback. Now he's dead, and to many, he's a legend. The House of Representatives paused for a moment of silence in his honor.

Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977. "The King" had become a bloated caricature of the superstar he once was. Presley was also working on a comeback at the time of his death. Sadly, his death prompted his comeback. Death has a way of bringing out the best in people. Presley's popularity continued to grow after his death, and his estate continues to rake in millions of dollars a year. This time, it's the "King of Pop," Michael Jackson, dead at the young age of 50. It seems like only yesterday that Jackson moon-walked into the public consciousness, but he started out over 40 years ago, at the age of 9. Presley and Jackson were both struggling with personal and professional problems when their untimely deaths caught everyone by surprise. Although their deaths ended similarly - rumors are surfacing that drugs may have played a part in Jackson's death - there is a huge difference between the two stories.

If we're old enough, most of us remember where we were when we heard of Presley's death. We remember where we were when we heard of John Lennon's death. The same goes for JFK, Martin Luther King, and other iconic figures, depending on our age. We found out after someone told us hours after the fact, or after we saw it on the evening news, usually hours after the deaths were confirmed by the news media, which relied on sources such as the Associated Press and UPI, for news that came off a wire machine and filtered through the newsrooms across America until someone read it on the air.

I found out about Jackson's death pretty much as it happened. It popped up on Twitter. In fact, news about his death spread instantly. We're in a new era where the news travels at the speed of the Internet. People can share their reactions instantly and from anywhere. The news media can confirm reports as they happen. The reaction to Jackson's death was so quick, in fact, that news of it was on every major television station within minutes. Unlike other recent deaths, like Farrah Fawcett or Ed McMahon, this one was not expected. And Jackson obviously was a much larger and iconic figure. News of his death took on a surreal quality; it hit us like an aluminum bat. Jackson seemed to be in good health, other than a bad back. The news didn't have time to filter through the news media as in the past, when people heard about major news stories as they trickled in. This was sudden, unexpected and shocking. Not just America, but the world was stunned.

The news media will be fixated on the death of Michael Jackson for the time being. Toxicological reports won't come in for over a week. Since the instant it hit the airwaves, the story has been somewhat static.

There is new information about a possible drug connection. Jackson was taking as many as seven different drugs, including Zoloft, Xanax and Demerol. Reports have come out that he may have OD'd on a shot of Demerol given to him just hours earlier. There was the mysterious appearance of a doctor who for some reason was with Jackson when he died. Dr. Conrad Robert Murray is being sought for an interview by the police. Liza Minelli, a family friend, hinted that Jackson's death was comparable to Anna Nicole Smith's, in that drugs were used while people looked the other way. Minelli said on CBS's "The Early Show" this morning: "When the autopsy comes, all hell's going to break loose, so thank God we're celebrating now."

The cause of death won't be known until the autopsy has been completed and the toxicological reports come back. As of now, cardiac arrest is being blamed for Jackson's death. That's it. There's nothing new to report, but the media is sticking with the story.

For now, Michael Jackson's fans aren't ready to say goodbye.

Theft Of Bologna Sandwich Is Major News

A man waiting for a bus in Oklahoma City claimed he was punched in the face by a man who stole his bologna sandwich. According to the Associated Press yesterday, 24-year-old Roger Hamilton told police he was sitting on the bus bench ready to eat his sandwich when a man began staring at him. Before he knew it, Hamilton had a swollen, bloody lip, and the attacker had made off with the sandwich. The attacker has not been found, and the police report listed the value of the sandwich at 76 cents. What is interesting about this story is not the story itself, but the fact that the AP report was picked up by so many news sources, including AOL, Yahoo, and television and news stations. There are literally thousands of Internet news sources and this has made the news accessible to just about everyone, and the news comes out instantly. But is the theft of a 76 cent bologna really worth the news coverage that it got? The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" story earlier in the week about a Mexican drug smuggling operation was national news because not only was it about the seizure of over a ton of cocaine, but it dealt with a major problem affecting both Mexico and the border states in the U.S. The oddness of the story just made it more newsworthy. It's no doubt that the theft of a bologna sandwich is weird, but does it warrant the media attention? Framed in the context of the economic recession we are now facing, the story does deserve mention. But does Roger Hamilton deserve the requisite media attention, the talk show appearances and the million dollar book deal? And what about the other top stories flying through cyberspace at breakneck speed. The Delaware State Fire Marshal's Office yesterday said a man damaged a toilet by setting off fireworks in an Arby's restroom. The AP story was quickly picked up by all the major news outlets. As Delaware State Police investigate the damaged toilet, the Arby's is being besieged by the media looking for more on the story, and money is being offered for any surveillance video. So far the man hasn't been arrested, but he would be wise to turn himself in. The publicity would give him his 15 minutes of fame and maybe more. It was just a toilet, after all. How about the story released earlier in the week about Jacob Skipworth, a Berrien Springs, Michigan man facing felony charges after allegedly spitting on a police officer's McDonald's Egg McMuffin. Originally reported by the AP, the story immediately caught the media's attention. According to the report, the unidentified officer bit into his sandwich and immediately realized something was wrong. The sandwich contained a "stringy with mucus" substance, according to the McDonald's assistant manager. Skipworth, who turned out to be a parolee who spent 14 years in an Indiana prison, said he has nothing against the police. A witness, however, overheard him saying, "I got that cop good." Skipworth is being held in the Berrien County Jail on $10,000 bond, charged with a "felony adulterated food count," according to The Smoking Gun website. A June 23 preliminary hearing has been set, but in the meantime, Skipworth reportedly has retained a public relations firm to handle media requests. The Internet has changed the way we get our news. Newspapers and magazines are going bankrupt, but there's no shortage of news. The Internet news sources are exploiting the advent of free or very cheap news content, and the overhead is next to nothing. The news comes out as it happens, instantly, and with little or no editorial oversight. And the weirder the better. While we are all stressed out about the current economic recession, we are comforted by news that makes us forget about our stock portfolio and our home mortgage. In this economy, the theft of a 76 cent bologna sandwich is major news, and thanks to the Internet, we hear about it as it happens. The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" drug deal is already old news.