Our recent history tells us we've soured on our presidents by the time they've reached their seventh years in office. In fact, each of the five lame-duck, two-term presidents -- Democrat and Republican -- barred from running again (since 1951) has had a Congress of the opposite party to deal with.
So when it's reported today that much of what President Barack Obama proposed in Tuesday night's State of the Union address fell on deaf ears or has no chance of becoming law, it's just par for the course. Right?
Well, not necessarily.
Although Obama has the second worst record of any president in the last 50 years of getting his State of the Union proposals enacted, according to the Washington Times, presidents don't always fall flat with their late-in-the-term policy requests.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told The Daily Beast he has seen little interest from the president in engaging with Republicans about compromise legislation. Things were a lot different in the 1980s when he was a Capitol Hill staffer, he said. At that time, President Ronald Reagan and congressional leaders exchanged different proposals in a more collegial manner, Thune said.
"The White House and the president have expressed interest, rhetorically ...," he said of the current climate, "but when push comes to shove, really engaging with the Congress, we haven't seen that."
Similarly, Mary Kate Cary, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, told The Daily Beast President Bill Clinton's and her former boss's next to the last State of the Union addresses focused on big issues where common ground might be found.
Clinton's, she said, focused on the federal budget surplus, welfare reform and solving the Y2K problem, while Bush mentioned immigration reform and pushing the country to wean itself from dependence on foreign oil.
It helps when the president understands the need for the two parties to work together. Obama, on the other hand, since the November election, seems to have decided to go his own way.
Chances are, then, his success rate of legislation from last night's proposals will be no better than his 21.4 percent rate from the State of the Union address in 2012, the 4.9 percent rate in 2013 (worst in the last 50 years) and the 17.2 percent of his requests fully or partially successful in 2014.
His rate of success over his first six years, according to data from Professors Donna R. Hoffman and Alison D. Howard, is 30 percent (64 of 209 requests were fully or partially successful). That is just above the 28 percent success rate of President Gerald R. Ford, who was the least successful in the last 50 years of getting his wish list granted.
Ford, of course, served out the remaining years of President Richard Nixon's unexpired term after the latter resigned amid the Watergate scandal in August 1974. Voters, perhaps simmering from Ford's subsequent pardon of Nixon, responded in the November 1974 election by giving Democrats 60 seats in the Senate and 291 seats in the House.
Obama's high mark, not surprisingly, came in 2010 when he had heavy Democrat majorities in the House and Senate. That year, he was successful in getting 25 of 45 State of the Union proposals fully or partially passed.
That year, 2010, was his top request year, but his 45 requests were slightly more than half the top mark for presidents in the last 50 years. Clinton, in his final address in 2000, made 87 requests.
Unlike Reagan and Clinton, arguably the two most successful presidents of the last half century, Obama apparently has no interest in working with an oppositional Congress.
He already has promised vetoes for several pieces of Republican legislation bottled up over the last several years by former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and he has threatened to use executive orders when and where possible to make sure what he wants is enacted.
Obama's example in this effort also may be Clinton, the last Democratic president, who worked with a Republican Congress to enact welfare reform and balance the budget after his party lost heavily in the 1994 mid-term election but turned confrontational in his last two years after being impeached by the House but acquitted in the Senate.
As his term wound down, he seemed not to care what Republicans thought of him, signing a nuclear test ban treaty (though the Senate didn't ratify it), signing a bill extending permanent normal trade status to China (despite some GOP opposition) and issuing 141 pardons and 36 commutations on his last day in office.
Clinton left office with the highest end-of-term approval rating since Dwight Eisenhower, a feat Obama may have decided he can match by going his own way.