Professor says it’s a race against time for second-term presidents with big agendas
January 25, 2013
When President Obama takes the
oath of office
for the second time on Monday, he will officially begin what Chapman University
political science
Professor Lori Cox Han says is one of the toughest roads for an American president – the second term.
“They have to realize that they are operating in a politic environment where everyone else is still beholden to the voters,” says Cox Han, an expert on the American presidency and the author of the just-released book
Presidents and the American Presidency
, co-authored by Diane J. Heith of
St. John’s University
and published by Oxford University Press.
“The president might be willing to do big things, but members of Congress, particularly members of his own party, aren’t all that excited because they still have to come up for re-election. That’s one of the consequences of the second term,” Cox Han says.
