The indictment handed down to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Friday in connection with the identity leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame is reminiscent of three other second-term presidential scandals in the last 35 years.
A grand jury charged Libby with five felonies alleging obstruction of justice, perjury to a grand jury and making false statements to FBI agents.
Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, Monica Lewinsky headlines and the Plame scandal all developed in their respective second terms, suggesting somewhat of a trend, political experts said.
One reason second terms are prone to scandal and controversy is simply due to the extra time a president has in office, said Nathan Monroe, an assistant political science professor.
"There's a logical answer: It's an issue of having sufficient time to do things that are indictable," Monroe said.
It's not as if politicos who want to oust the president or administration officials wait until the second term to go after them, as it's much less valuable to bring indictment charges in the second term because the president is leaving soon anyway, he said.
"If you're able to bring indictments, it provides opportunity for opponents to have a better opportunity to win in the election for president," Monroe said.
Generally, second terms are associated with more political problems because of over-reaching, hubris or exhaustion of ideas, said Douglas Hoekstra, a James Madison professor.
Hoekstra pointed to Bush's attempt to reorganize Social Security, which met with heavy resistance from both Republicans and Democrats.
"Doing this was courageous, but also a political error," he said in an e-mail.
"Social Security plus Katrina plus the steadily eroding popular support for the war in Iraq, all now added to a problematic Supreme Court nomination, have damaged Bush greatly."
Monroe retraced other presidential scandals, which didn't necessarily occur in the second term, he said, but unraveled during that time.
Most notorious is the Watergate scandal, ending with the resignation of President Nixon halfway through his second term.
In 1972, the break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices by the Committee to Re-elect the President wouldn't have happened if Nixon wasn't running again, Monroe said.
During the Iran-Contra Affair, also known as Irangate, President Reagan's administration sold arms to Iran in hopes that Lebanon would release American hostages.
The scandal carried into Reagan's second term simply because he had one, Monroe said.
"Iran Contra was strictly a function of getting an opportunity to do stuff in first term, and it taking awhile for that stuff to surface," he said.
The Valerie Plame leak has the same signs of previous scandals — and might consume the Bush administration in the same way Reagan's second term was overtaken by the Iran-Contra affair, said David Rohde, a political science professor at Duke University.
"There was significant impact on Reagan," he said. "It caused a lot of problems if for no other reason because it occupied a lot of time and attention, and they were not able to devote that time to legislative initiatives."
And Bush's deteriorating political shape — opposite of Reagan's during his scandal — will make it even more difficult for him to get legislative initiatives passed, Rohde said.
What could turn out different in the Plame case, compared to the Lewinsky and Iran-Contra scandals, is if President Bush had knowledge of the leak, Rohde said.
So far, it doesn't look to be a problem, he said.
Scott Cendrowski can be reached at cendrow3@msu.edu.
