One-term wonder: what Barack Obama can learn from James K. Polk.

• Author: Murphy, Tim
• Position: A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent - Book review

A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent

by Robert W. Merry

Simon & Schuster, 592 pp.

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Writing for U. S. News & World Report last November, columnist James Pethokoukis needed just one week to declare the Obama presidency a bust. If the economy continued its downward trajectory, Pethokoukis wrote, "the 'O' in 'Obama' may stand for 'One Term.'" His pronouncement was a tad premature--the flubbed oath of office was still ten weeks away--but by no means exceptional. Within a week of Bill Clinton's triumph in 1992, analysts darkly warned that his contract would not be renewed if his health care reform failed; and only two days after the Supreme Court effectively sealed the Florida recount in 2000, Thomas F. Eagleton, writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, sketched a comparison between George W. Bush and Rutherford B. Hayes--the latter a beneficiary of widescale voter fraud and, more damning for his legacy, a one-term president.

For occupants of the Oval Office, the prospect of a four-and-out brings with it the putrid aroma of failure. Even Cincinnatus, the patron saint of civic virtue, served two full terms as dictator before famously turning in his fasces for a plow. And so, when health care reform, economic woe, and an escalating war in Afghanistan conspired to sink the new president's approval ratings back to par this August, there was a minor kerfuffle when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declared that his boss was "quite comfortable" sacrificing a second term if it meant pushing through progressive legislation.

Quite comfortable? Hasn't he ever heard of Jimmy Carter?

Perhaps Gibbs had in mind James K. Polk, the nation's greatest president never to seek reelection and the subject of Robert W. Merry's A Country of Vast Designs. Merry, formerly editor in chief of Congressional Quarterly, tackles a compelling but largely uncharted era in American history: the flurry of western expansion that bridged the Age of Jackson to the politics of the Civil War. In three grand strokes, Polk transformed the geopolitical outlook of the continent for centuries to come, expanding the nation by a third and solidifying its claim to the Pacific. Polk secured the annexation of Texas, snatched the Oregon Territory from the hated Brits, and went to war with Mexico over the title to California and the Southwest. On the home front, Polk solidified the legacy of his mentor...