What is it that makes sec­ond terms so polit­i­cal­ly treach­er­ous? Received wis­dom tells us that scan­dal is root­ed in hubris – a new­ly re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent, hav­ing stared down the threat of polit­i­cal extinc­tion, now thinks him­self invul­ner­a­ble, and soon enough is caught up in scandal.

But I think some­thing more fun­da­men­tal is at work.

The ques­tion has tak­en on renewed rel­e­vance in recent days, as the Pres­i­dent nav­i­gates among mul­ti­ple polit­i­cal hazards:

• Beng­hazi. ABC News  last Fri­day breathed new life into this con­tro­ver­sy when it chron­i­cled the evo­lu­tion of talk­ing points used by Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials to describe the attack on a diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ty in Libya. Those talk­ing points, as I not­ed weeks ago, were scrubbed by the White House to remove ref­er­ences to the al Qai­da-relat­ed ter­ror­ists who led the attack and to sug­gest that it was instead the result of pop­u­lar out­rage against a YouTube video.

• IRS. Fri­day also saw anoth­er long-sim­mer­ing scan­dal emerge, after a senior IRS offi­cial apol­o­gized for hav­ing tar­get­ed con­ser­v­a­tive groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

• AP. A third scan­dal also sur­faced on that fate­ful Fri­day when the Jus­tice Depart­ment noti­fied the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that it had mon­i­tored incom­ing and out­go­ing traf­fic on 20 phone lines used by the news agency’s reporters and edi­tors in an attempt to deter­mine who had leaked clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about a foiled ter­ror­ist attack.

• HHS. Lost amid these high­er-pro­file con­tro­ver­sies was a Wash­ing­ton Post report that HHS Sec­re­tary Kath­leen Sebe­lius was hit­ting up indus­tries that her agency reg­u­lates for con­tri­bu­tions to groups that are work­ing to imple­ment the new health care law.

Respond­ing to a sin­gle scan­dal is dif­fi­cult; respond­ing to mul­ti­ple scan­dals is almost impos­si­ble. The Pres­i­dent has wise­ly decid­ed to dis­tance him­self both from the IRS con­tro­ver­sy and the mon­i­tor­ing of phones used by AP reporters. He’s so far ignored the poten­tial prob­lems at HHS while choos­ing to dig in on Benghazi.

Those respons­es seem, with the excep­tion of Beng­hazi, well-cal­cu­lat­ed. The IRS had got­ten away with mis­con­duct for years, as the press dis­missed com­plaints from con­ser­v­a­tive groups about unfair treat­ment as Repub­li­can para­noia. The New York Times went so far as to com­mend the agency for stalling approval of polit­i­cal groups. The then IRS Com­mis­sion­er flat­ly denied to Con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees that his agency had tar­get­ed right-lean­ing appli­cants. When the Admin­is­tra­tion learned last week that a forth­com­ing report from the IRS’s inter­nal watch­dog would prove oth­er­wise, they trot­ted out an offi­cial, Lois Lern­er, to apol­o­gize for “inap­pro­pri­ate” con­duct by the agency’s Cincin­nati office. It soon emerged that Lern­er her­self had signed a let­ter to at least one Tea Par­ty group, which was among the signs that the agency’s prob­lems weren’t lim­it­ed to its Cincin­nati back­wa­ter. The Pres­i­dent swift­ly and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly con­demned the IRS actions and direct­ed Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Jack Lew to imple­ment the Inspec­tor General’s rec­om­men­da­tions. The Jus­tice Depart­ment announced that the FBI would inves­ti­gate the matter.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment has prob­lems of its own. The media is under­stand­ably more con­cerned about threats to its own lib­er­ties than it is about threats to the lib­er­ties of oth­ers. A sto­ry that the gov­ern­ment was mon­i­tor­ing traf­fic on phones used by Tea Par­ty groups would elic­it yawns in most news­rooms, but a sto­ry that it had mon­i­tored phones used by reporters was sure to stir their ani­mal spir­its. Already, more than 50 news out­lets have joined in a let­ter con­demn­ing the government’s actions. And the Attor­ney Gen­er­al has tak­en the unusu­al step of recus­ing him­self from the Department’s probe into its own con­duct. The goal in both cas­es seems to be to get past the scan­dals by order­ing up addi­tion­al investigations.

The Pres­i­dent has tak­en a dif­fer­ent tack with Beng­hazi. He con­tin­ues to insist that he had called it an act of ter­ror­ism from the begin­ning, a con­tention that earned him “Four Pinoc­chios” yes­ter­day from the Wash­ing­ton Post’s fact-check­er.  Argu­ing in the alter­na­tive, as lawyers would say, he has dis­missed the talk­ing points that were revised to strike ref­er­ences to the role of al Qai­da-linked orga­ni­za­tions as a “sideshow” and assert­ed that the entire con­tro­ver­sy is the doing of his polit­i­cal opponents.

It’s time to shelve the “polit­i­cal sideshow” talk­ing point, though it proved effec­tive in tamp­ing down the con­tro­ver­sy until quite recent­ly. When Mau­reen Dowd, the New York­er, and ABC News side with your crit­ics, you are well-advised to come up with a new line of defense.

The Admin­is­tra­tion has done a pret­ty effec­tive job at quelling the IRS con­tro­ver­sy. Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings will con­tin­ue and heads will like­ly roll, but absent some evi­dence that the White House direct­ed the agency to harass con­ser­v­a­tive groups, this storm will pass. Not so with Beng­hazi or the AP. The White House has lost con­trol of the for­mer and the press will not soon for­give the latter.

But it’s the Sebe­lius sto­ry that I find most trou­bling. The HHS Sec­re­tary has the unen­vi­able task of imple­ment­ing the mas­sive health care law in the face of Con­gres­sion­al unwill­ing­ness to allo­cate need­ed funds. She’s endured crit­i­cism for tap­ping oth­er agency accounts to pro­vide the mon­ey, but still is short of cash. So she’s tak­en the unusu­al step of dun­ning enti­ties that her agency over­sees for con­tri­bu­tions to non-prof­it groups that are work­ing with HHS to smooth the law’s imple­men­ta­tion. One such group is Enroll Amer­i­ca, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the health law work that is head­ed by for­mer Oba­ma White House offi­cial Anne Fil­ipic. The group’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil is a curi­ous hodge­podge of left-of-cen­ter advo­ca­cy groups (Nation­al Coun­cil of La Raza, US Pub­lic Inter­est Research Group, Nation­al Urban League), labor unions (SEIU) and health indus­try giants (Aet­na, CVS Caremark).

I don’t mean to sug­gest that the Sec­re­tary has done any­thing ille­gal. The law per­mits Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials to solic­it polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble dona­tions, so long as they do so on their own time and don’t employ pub­lic resources. But there’s some­thing here that doesn’t pass the smell test. Imag­ine your­self a health insur­ance CEO who gets a fundrais­ing call from the Sec­re­tary of HHS. She wants your com­pa­ny to make a large, tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion to a group that will help her imple­ment her favorite new law. That law, as it hap­pens, gives her enor­mous pow­er over your busi­ness. Under its pro­vi­sions, the gov­ern­ment will dic­tate, among oth­er things, what your prod­uct will cov­er, how you will mar­ket it, and what you will be allowed to charge for it. The per­son on the oth­er end of the line will enforce that law. The suc­cess or fail­ure of your enter­prise depends to some extent on whether she counts you as a friend. Her inten­tion is not to extort mon­ey from your cor­po­ra­tion, but the prac­ti­cal effect is almost indistinguishable.

And that is the root of scandal.

Scan­dals don’t start with bad peo­ple set­ting out to break laws. They most often begin with well-inten­tioned peo­ple doing what they think is right. They try to pro­tect the Pres­i­dent against his polit­i­cal oppo­nents by strip­ping ref­er­ences to ter­ror­ism from offi­cial talk­ing points. They throw up road­blocks to the President’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents seek­ing res­o­lu­tion of their tax sta­tus. They tram­ple on lib­er­ties in their effort to pro­tect nation­al secu­ri­ty. And they try to advance the President’s pol­i­cy objec­tives by using pow­er­ful reg­u­la­tors to solic­it mon­ey from the indus­tries they regulate.

Scan­dals take flight when good peo­ple acquire too much power.

The scan­dals that beset the Admin­is­tra­tion aren’t so much due to the per­ils of a sec­ond term as they are to a gov­ern­ment that has out­grown its lim­its. Should any of these cur­rent scan­dals deep­en in the com­ing months, there will be calls for new laws to pre­vent them in the future. A gen­uine solu­tion would instead focus on plac­ing appro­pri­ate lim­its on gov­ern­ment. Curb­ing gov­ern­ment pow­er is the best way to curb its abuse.