Lessons from the Bush years.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION - George W. Bush

THE STORY OF George W. Bush is a work in progress. At this point in history, his public support rivals the historic lows of Pres. Harry Truman after he fired Gen. Douglas McArthur, as well as Pres. Richard Nixon after Watergate. While his presidency is not yet over and his legacy far from clear, a few lessons can be drawn from it:

* When the country is at war and the public sees victory at hand, the president will be rewarded at the polls. On the other hand, if the nation is involved in a protracted and unresolved conflict, the president will pay a serious political price. In 1864, had Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman not broken through the Confederate defenses in Atlanta, Pres. Abraham Lincoln may well have lost the election to George McClelland. In 1944, our successes in the Pacific and at D-Day convinced voters that victory against Germany and Japan was within reach. Thus, Franklin D. Roosevelt easily was reelected to an unprecedented fourth term.

On the other hand, in 1952, with the Korean War stalemated, Pres. Truman faced likely political defeat and withdrew as a candidate for reelection; in 1968, with the Vietnam War losing public support, Pres. Lyndon Johnson also withdrew as a candidate for reelection. Today, if George W. Bush were allowed to run for a third term, no one would give him much of a chance.

* When the public perceives a serious threat to its security, it will grant the president broad powers to protect the country, even at the expense of some liberties. In 1861-62, Pres. Lincoln's early suspension of the writ of habeas corpus elicited little opposition in the North; in 1942, Pres. Roosevelt's decisions to intern Japanese-Americans and to try a group of Nazi saboteurs by military commission received broad public support and the sanction of the Supreme Court; in 1949-50, after the Communist takeover of China, the Soviet atomic tests, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Alger Hiss case, and the atomic spy cases, all of the measures to curb communist activity had enthusiastic support.

In The Terror Presidency, Jack Goldsmith recounts how the liberal left cheered Roosevelt's decision to try Nazis in a military court. The Nation opined that any open trial would be "rich in information that be of value to the enemy, particularly to other saboteurs still on the loose." The Detroit Free Press went so far as to demand that, "Realism calls for a stone wall and a firing squad, and not a lot of holler-than-thou eye-wash...