A looming Senate trial after a legacy-staining impeachment. Fights with Congress over the power of the executive to use military force without lawmakers' express approval. Keeping Iran nuclear-free.

The ghosts of presidencies past are haunting President Donald Trump, who is grappling at once with several political and foreign policy crises that individually consumed the attention of previous presidents. And on top of it, Trump has to juggle them all as he seeks re-election in a deeply polarized political environment.

Trump returned from a two-week holiday stay at his Mar-a-Lago resort to a maelstrom of problems – some of them arguably self-created, his critics note. The GOP-led Senate, which is widely expected to acquit Trump of the two articles of impeachment approved by the Democratic-run House in December, was still feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is still holding up the formal action until she sees what kind of trial the Senate plans to conduct.

John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, volunteered that he'd be willing to testify before the Senate in an eventual trial if he's subpoenaed – undermining White House and congressional Republican assertions that no more witnesses need be heard.

Cartoons on President Donald Trump View All 941 Images

Then a feared counterattack from Iran came Tuesday, when the Middle East nation launched missiles at American bases in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. killing of a powerful Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani. Both sides appeared to stand down Wednesday morning, but analysts fear more is to come – even if the retaliation is economic and not military. Efforts to rally Congress 'round the flag – and the president – failed, with the House voting Thursday in favor of a joint resolution demanding that Trump consult Congress before initiating any military action against Iran. Trump, meanwhile, insisted that as long as he is commander in chief, Iran will remain nuclear-free.

It's as if Trump took some of the biggest challenges that plagued former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama and mushed them into a big, politically explosive ball. And he may have a harder time with them in part because of the experiences both Congress and the American voting public have had in the past.

"With some of it, he's definitely dealing with fallout from previous presidents," says Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. "There's no way to talk about intelligence and foreign policy without thinking of 2003 and WMD," Zelizer adds, referring to the Bush administration's claim that topping Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was warranted because he had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Such stockpiles of weapons were never found.

"There's a natural skepticism when a president says, we have the intelligence we need to go to war. That's why a lot of Democrats don't believe him," Zelizer adds.

"What president, in the middle of impeachment, doesn't try to get us to look elsewhere?"

Thursday's House debate opened with Rep. Eliot Engel, New York Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, arguing for the war powers resolution. Emerging from a classified briefing on the matter the day before, Engel – who voted in 2002 to authorize force in Iraq – said the briefing theme was simply "trust us." That's not something Democrats – and a few Republicans, including an incensed Sen. Mike Lee of Utah – are prepared to do with Trump.

Republicans repeated the president's claims. Iran was "actively plotting to take big action," Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and his party's senior member on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said during floor debate. He accused Democrats of being "incapable of giving the president credit where credit is due." It was a far cry from 2002, when then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri appeared with Bush in the Rose Garden to reveal the text of the Iraq War resolution.

Trump's actions and his assertion, without provided evidence, that Iran was planning to blow up a U.S. embassy might have served as a way to rally the nation in the face of danger – or at least distract people from his other big problem, impeachment. And it could have worked in a previous era, analysts note. But there's little indication that is the case now.

A USA Today/Ipsos poll this week found that a majority of Americans, by a 52%-34% margin, called Trump's behavior with Iran "reckless." Further, 55% of Americans – and nearly a third of Republicans – said the attack had made the U.S. less safe.

"People are not buying his narrative about Iran," says University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, who is also senior fellow of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. If Trump was trying to change the topic, "it's got limits in this environment," Telhami adds, warning that "it's definitely not over," and that more U.S.-Iran conflicts could be coming.

Bush was punished for the Iraq War – but only after it had begun to sour and the public re-evaluated its earlier support for the action, notes presidential scholar Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. The payback came in the 2006 midterm elections, when Democrats took control of both the House and Senate.

The Photos You Should See – Jan. 2020 View All 66 Images

"What president, in the middle of impeachment, doesn't try to get us to look elsewhere?" Perry says. Clinton, after all, launched airstrikes against Iraq in December of 1998, leading to a one-week delay in the impeachment proceedings against him.

But Clinton had help from the British and support from the international community, while Trump acted alone. Clinton announced the strikes the day of the event in an Oval Office address; Trump announced the killing of Soleimani from his Florida resort and didn't make a formal address to the nation until five days later, after it was clear the Iranians' retaliation had produced no U.S. casualties.

If Trump is indeed trying to create a distraction, the Ipsos poll suggests the public is onto him. By a 47%-39% split, those polled said Trump killed the Iranian general to distract from his impeachment troubles.

"There is a wag-the-dog phenomenon here," says University of Illinois College of Law professor Francis Boyle, referring to a phrase from an eponymous movie that describes such distraction techniques. "He's channeling, to some extent, Bush, and he's repudiating Obama," adds Perry, who unsuccessfully worked with a member of Congress eager to impeach Bush over the Iraq War.

Obama has been an ongoing preoccupation of Trump's, with the sitting president frequently blaming his predecessor for various problems and touting his own efforts to undo things Obama did as president. This week, Trump claimed that Iran's retaliatory missiles were paid for with money Obama sent the nation. In fact, Iran was finally given cash from a decades-old claim between the U.S. and Iran after the non-nuclear proliferation agreement was signed among the U.S., Iran and other nations. Trump pulled the United States out of the deal, which he says was poorly negotiated. This week, he urged other nations to do the same.