Presidents seem cursed to fare badly in the middle of their second terms.
Usually, the president's party in Congress pays the price. After FDR's 1936 landslide, Congressional Republicans skidded on the edge of extinction, with a mere 89 House members and 17 Senators. An overconfident Roosevelt then blundered with his unpopular scheme to pack liberals into the Supreme Court. The fall of 1937 brought a deep recession that reversed much of the economic progress that America had made during the New Deal. In 1938, the GOP snapped back, picking up 80 seats in the House and six in the Senate.