"George W. Bush is now facing the legacy of Richard M. Nixon. Only two other presidents have won re-election since Tricky Dick resigned in disgrace amid the Watergate scandal in 1974 and both of them--Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton--found their second terms mired in scandal." - The Second Term Curse

Brendan Miniter writes about what many of us expect to happen.  For my part, I expect it because I am sure that I can feel the pulse of Democrats.  Bill Clinton was impeached, and that calls for a quid-pro-tit response. (Disclosure: in case you don't know, I have the lowest regard for today's Democratic party, and see it as a threat to our democracy no less sinister than Nazism and Communism.)  Here's what Miniter thinks ....

"It doesn't matter now whether the corruption (and any bureaucracy as large as the federal government contains corruption) actually leads to the Oval Office. The knives are out and, electoral mandates notwithstanding, presidents are most vulnerable after they have a first term record to pick through ... Abu Ghraib became an issue because many journalists thought, ah ha!, evidence was finally found that proved this White House was ready and willing to throw civil liberties to the wind. Every "torture memo" revelation since the war on terror began has only confirmed the suspicion that the next Watergate story is out there and that it is somehow connected to the shadowy war against al Qaeda. In a perfect world, we'd now be talking about openness and transparency as a way of beating the curse. Yet for Mr. Bush, no matter how open he is, if the future is about tweaking the policies he already has in place to fight the war on terror, the media will eventually find a scandal that resonates."

 Ask yourself ... in your wildest imagination can you conjure up the same NYT response to an Al Gore, or Bill Clinton Abu Ghraib?  Answer: Pffffffftttt.  Fasten your seatbelts.  Or, lock and load.