Barack Obama

What is it about presidents' second terms that makes them seem so scandal-ridden? Simple: The iron law of longevity. All governments make mistakes, and all governments try to hide those mistakes. But the longer an administration is in office, the more errors it makes, and the harder they are to conceal. Just ask Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, all of whom spent much of their second terms playing defense. The longevity rule caught up with Barack Obama last week as he wrestled clumsily with not one controversy but three: the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of "tea party" groups, the Benghazi killings and the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press telephone records.

Although there's still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama's bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency. "We're portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It's actually closer to us being idiots. " So far, this is the administration's best defense. It was offered to CBS' Sharyl Attkisson by an anonymous aide involved in the White House's disastrous response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, and President Obama had a brief verbal smackdown when she greeted him at the Phoenix airport on Wednesday. In her political memoir, "Scorpions for Breakfast," the feisty governor had written about a private discussion she had with the president in the Oval Office back in June 2010. She describes his style in that meeting as patronizing and condescending. Apparently, the president did not appreciate that characterization and, when she asked him for another meeting as she greeted him on the airport tarmac, he let her know it. An exchange ensued in which Brewer could be seen jabbing her finger at the president.

What is it about presidents' second terms that makes them seem so scandal-ridden? Simple: The iron law of longevity. All governments make mistakes, and all governments try to hide those mistakes. But the longer an administration is in office, the more errors it makes, and the harder they are to conceal. Just ask Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, all of whom spent much of their second terms playing defense. The longevity rule caught up with Barack Obama last week as he wrestled clumsily with not one controversy but three: the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of "tea party" groups, the Benghazi killings and the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press telephone records.

In his speech accepting the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama neatly transformed the hope and change of 2008 that centered on him into a voter-centered hope and change for 2012. "So you see, the election four years ago wasn't about me,” the president said. "It was about you. My fellow citizens, you were the change. "You're the reason there's a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who'll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can't limit her coverage. You did that.  "You're the reason a young man in Colorado who never thought he'd be able to afford his dream of earning a medical degree is about to get that chance. You made that possible.

If the Barack Obama who showed up for the second presidential debate had shown up for the first debate, there is a good chance Republicans would now be sullenly turning their thoughts to 2016 and arguing over how they got tricked into nominating a loser two elections in a row. The Obama who did show up for that first debate breathed new life into Romney's candidacy by being lifeless himself. Tuesday night, though, the president was in command. He reinvigorated his own campaign by delivering the best debate performance of his political career.

Exactly 76 days remain before the 2012 presidential election, and there are many questions still to be answered. Will the economy improve, or will the United States face another recession? Will substantive issues come out of the respective campaigns, or will they persist with negative attacks? And finally, will Barack Obama win a second term or will Republican nominee Mitt Romney unseat the Democratic incumbent? The Times' extensive political coverage will best answer those questions, but I can offer at least one morsel of information: It's pretty safe to say one prominent Laker will vote for Obama regardless of what happens in the ensuing two-plus months.

Country music veteran Hank Williams Jr. is doing his best to become the official troubadour of the we-hate-Barack-Obama crowd. During a performance at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 17, Williams told the audience, “We've got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S., and we hate him!” The throng of heartland Americans cheered enthusiastically. Last fall, ESPN stopped using a Williams tune as the theme song for “Monday Night Football” after the singer made an analogy between Obama and Hitler during an interview on Fox News.

President Obama's date with a dozen Republican senators has so caught my imagination that I cannot quite let it go. The idea of the president picking up the tab for dinner in a swanky Washington restaurant for 12 of his most staunch political foes sounds like an improbable plot twist straight out of “The West Wing.” But, as I learned long ago, political reality is almost always more weird and fascinating than political fiction. In my mind, it's easy to visualize the film version of the dinner.

The neck-and-neck race between President Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, will be the most expensive campaign in American history. It will be a battle between two robust political organizations. And it is a good bet things are going to get really nasty. There are genuine differences between the two candidates -- one is a classic liberal, the other a classic conservative -- but neither is a renegade and, despite what the partisan bombast may allege, neither man is anything close to a radical.

There are two things you can do for your mother on Mother's Day. One is to say "thank you. " (Over lunch, with flowers.) The other is to ask her for advice - even if she's not convinced you really want it. "I don't think kids take any advice from their parents after they're 12," my mother told me last week. "But maybe they'll consider it. If they consider it, that's all you can ask. " Lois Doyle McManus is 87, and arthritis is getting in the way of her piano career. Her most recent performance, a concert with a community college orchestra, was last month.

Barack Obama really, really does not want to get tangled up in Syria. For almost a year, Obama's secretaries of State - first Hillary Rodham Clinton, now John Kerry - have pressed the president for more aid to the insurgents who are fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad. Obama and his White House aides have resisted, fearing a slippery slope that would lead inexorably to U.S. military intervention and the kind of messy Middle Eastern war he campaigned against in 2008.

Jimmy Carter gets revenge on Barack Obama with the help of James Earl Jones in a Chicago Blackhawks locker room.

WASHINGTON -- Sometimes, in the hubbub of Washington, it takes a personal story to grab government officials' attention. Enter Patrick Ivison, an 18-year-old USC freshman who was left a quadriplegic as a toddler when a neighbor accidentally backed a car over him. He was at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, telling his story in an effort to persuade federal regulators to complete work on a requirement for back-up cameras in new cars. He was joined at a news conference by parents who held up pictures of their children killed in back-over accidents.

The Republican National Committee's Spring gathering is taking place this week at Loews Hollywood. That is not Hollywood, Fla., or Hollywood, S.C., or Hollywood, Ala. - all real towns in really red states - but Hollywood, Calif., the place where Sean Penn, Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, George Clooney and the rest of the entertainment industry's liberal horde earn their keep. Like Nixon going to China, the Republicans have entered hostile territory.

David Axelrod, former senior advisor to President Obama, is joining the list of  one-time Obama administration officials who will be penning memoirs next year, Penguin Press has announced . Other Obama administration officials with books on the way include former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Axelrod's book is scheduled for a fall 2014 release. "Over the past 30 years as a journalist, political consultant and senior advisor to the President, David Axelrod has had a front-row seat to our political process at every level," Penguin Press editor-in-chief Ann Godoff said in a statement, "His idealism is infectious and his storytelling gifts are prodigious.

Barack Obama The Story David Maraniss Simon & Schuster: 643 pp., $32.50 Abnormal men become presidents of the United States. The overweening self-confidence required to reach for the office, the preternatural discipline and effort of will needed to grasp it - in another setting, these traits might be called pathological. Tracing the roots of abnormality becomes a recurring motif in presidential biographies: polio's impact on Franklin D. Roosevelt, the death of John F. Kennedy's eldest brother, the absent or dysfunctional fathers of Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton.

Sure, you may know which man -- Mitt Romney or Barack Obama -- you want to see running the country, but which one would you have wanted to know in high school? We learned four years ago that young Barack was a laid-back, not overly studious kid who loved basketball and occasionally smoked a little weed. The kids at Punahou, the prestigious Honolulu prep school Obama attended, never expected their amiable but seemingly unmotivated classmate to one day become the most powerful man on the planet.

If presidential politics ever involved time travel, President Obama might be in a little trouble. If an election between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama were held today, 58% would vote for Reagan over Obama, according to a survey of 1,000 Americans age 18 and older conducted by Kelton Research for the National Geographic Channel. Though when the field is narrowed to people ages 18-34 -- those either too young to have known Reagan as president or too young to remember much -- the gap shrinks to 51% in favor of Reagan.

Over the past few weeks, the race for mayor of Los Angeles has been less a contest of ideas and leadership than it's been an endorsement roulette, with Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilman Eric Garcetti trotting out their latest pledges of support as evidence of their fitness for the city's top job. But does anybody other than the candidates really care? Are there large numbers of voters who will vote for Greuel because Houston Mayor Annise Parker endorsed her or for Garcetti because former Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez spoke up for him?