Leadership Quote by David R. Gergen

Second terms are where power stops auditioning and starts freelancing. David R. Gergen’s line lands as a cool, beltway warning dressed up as historical observation: yes, he’s talking about presidents, but he’s really talking about the psychology of incumbency and the institutional lullaby that surrounds a reelected leader.

The phrasing does two things at once. “We know” is a soft power move, invoking a shared civic memory that pressures the listener to nod along. It’s less an empirical claim than a consensus trap: if you disagree, you’re cast as naive about Washington’s cycles. Then come the paired villains, “hubris” and “scandal,” a neat moral-and-mechanical combo. Hubris is internal, the private corrosion of restraint; scandal is external, the public eruption that makes the private visible. Together they sketch a predictable arc: victory breeds overreach, overreach breeds exposure.

Context matters. Gergen is a longtime presidential adviser and commentator, a professional interpreter of executive power. His intent isn’t to psychoanalyze one person so much as to discipline the room - to remind a governing class (and a watching public) that reelection removes the two main constraints on behavior: fear of voters and fear of unemployment. A second term can feel like earned impunity: staffing gets more insular, loyalists replace skeptics, and the agenda shifts from plausible achievements to legacy projects.

The line works because it sounds like history speaking, when it’s really prudence speaking. It’s a preemptive strike against complacency: not “don’t celebrate,” but “don’t believe your own press release.”