31.   Presidential scholars said that if Cheney were to step down, Bush would face tough tradeoffs.

32.   Presidential scholars say he has grown in the job.

33.   Presidential scholars say Middleton has set the benchmark for opening sometimes embarrassing papers and private recordings as quickly as possible to scholars and to the public.

34.   Second-term presidents sometimes recharge the batteries of their top officials by moving them around, said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.

35.   Some lawyers and presidential scholars see the case ending with the president hobbled by embarrassing revelations, but still able to cling to power.

36.   Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Clinton might be better served if the peace talks had failed.

37.   Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar with the Brookings Institution, said conventional wisdom holds that second terms are not as good as first terms.

38.   Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar who has observed transitions since the first Eisenhower administration, said Bush got most of the symbols right.

39.   Stephen Hess, a Washington-based presidential scholar, took an even more charitable view.

40.   The presidential scholars contacted for the survey said that the most recent presidents cannot be rated very accurately because too much historical perspective is not yet available.