From George W. to George W.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American life, he was not thinking of the American presidency. But the dominant historical pattern reinforces Fitzgerald’s point. Second terms are seldom as successful as first, often disappointing, sometimes disastrous. Most recently they have been defined by scandal (i.e. Watergate, Irangate, Monica Lewinsky).

The core reason for this problematic pattern might be called the duck-and-chickens syndrome. A second-term president is a lame duck with only a limited time to exercise executive power and with reduced authority to maintain discipline within the party. And the chickens come home to roost during a second term when unresolved problems from the first term evolve into major crises. For President Bush the two large chickens are Iraq and the deficit. The potential for sensational scandals also looms in the case of the Halliburton contract, the disarray in the CIA, and Tom DeLay’s shenanigans. All this bodes ill for Bush.

Pundits inside the Beltway have been offering their up-close wisdom to Bush since the election. I don’t live inside the Beltway; in fact, I have been living for the last four years in the 18th century, writing a biography of George Washington. So mine is a more far-away version of advice. Here is the conceit: What would the first George W. urge upon the current George W. in order to avoid the second-term syndrome?

First, the Iraq insurgency. Washington led a successful insurgency against the dominant military and economic power in the world. He shaped his winning strategy around the recognition that the British occupation faced insurmountable obstacles if the bulk of the population resented its presence. In part because of our own anti-imperial origins as a nation, the United States is ill equipped to replace the British Empire as the presiding imperial presence in the Middle East for the next 50 years. Iraq is likely to become an open wound that bleeds all over Bush’s second term as long as our troops remain the face of the occupation. Sometime after the Iraq elections, in January, and before the U.S. congressional elections in 2006, we need to declare victory in Iraq and withdraw, perhaps leaving a residual force in northern Iraq to protect the Kurds. Our removal of Saddam Hussein has given Iraqis the opportunity to reinvent their quasi-country, but that will take decades, and the struggle must be theirs to win or lose.

Second, the terrorist threat. As commander in chief of the Continental Army, then as president, Washington faced primal threats to American survival as a nation. The threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism is a secondary rather than a primal threat, meaning that it places lives and lifestyles at risk, but not the survival of the nation itself. Washington would regard our current reaction to 9/11 as excessive. We faced more mortal threats to our national security in his own time and afterward (the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Cold War qualify). Against terrorism, confidence rather than fear is the proper posture, in great part because of the institutions Washington and his generation bequeathed to us. The Islamic fundamentalists believe that Allah is on their side. But history is on ours.

Third, the legacy issue. First terms are about reelection, second terms are about legacy. Washington’s legacy was established in the Farewell Address, in 1796. It made two points: first, that America’s future as an independent nation lay to the west rather than across the Atlantic in Europe; second, that American foreign policy should be governed by interest rather than ideals.

Bush’s proposed domestic agenda -- the reform of the tax code and privatization of Social Security -- is not the stuff of a great legacy. It is also likely to run afoul of congressional factions ingenious at administering death by a thousand cuts.

There are really only two prospective executive initiatives capable of taking Bush to legacy land. The first is a bold scientific program -- on the scale of the Manhattan Project or the space initiative of the Kennedy administration -- designed to make the United States energy independent within the next decade. The second is a concerted effort to resolve the Palestinian issue by brokering a deal with the Israelis and the post-Arafat Palestinian Authority. Both efforts have greater potential to change the toxic chemistry of the current Middle East than any enduring U.S. military presence in the region.

These are my own translations of Washington’s wisdom. We cannot fly the great man himself in from the 18th century. And even if we could, he would not know about weapons of mass destruction, Medicare or even Iraq. But if I have him right, he can still speak to us across the ages, and President Bush (or should it be Karl Rove?) might benefit from listening.