NEWS YOU CAN USE: Watch Out for August! Think July was historic? History says: beware the eighth month.

August isn’t just a month for natural disasters. Some of the biggest international crises have hit in the eighth month. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Bush 41 recovered quickly and formed an international coalition that went on to oust Hussein from Kuwait. The next August, Bush faced another international crisis, as old-guard Soviets unhappy with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms placed the general secretary under house arrest. When Bush’s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft told the president about the coup, Bush complained that U.S. officials were surprised by the development. Scowcroft had the perfect retort: “Yes, so was Gorbachev.”

The final kind of August surprise has been scandal. Neither the Watergate burglary nor the original revelation of Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky happened in August, but the denouement of each scandal did. Nixon resigned in August 1974, elevating his unelected vice president Gerald Ford to the presidency. Clinton, faced with DNA evidence of his affair with Lewinsky on her infamous Gap blue dress, finally ended his repeated denials of the affair. He addressed the nation from the Map Room and confessed that “I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong.” Here, for once, August proved a respite. Clinton went to Martha’s Vineyard with his family in an attempt to repair the relationships damaged by his admission.

There likely isn’t an American alive who could imagine a month more tumultuous than this past July for presidential politics. By all rational odds, things will calm down from here. Still, history warns: don’t bet on it.

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