All of which brings us, of course, to Bush and the likely hallmarks of his second term. He has already made it clear that he intends to work on Social Security reform, tax issues and education, and he will doubtless claim that his victory offers a "mandate" for change. But it is highly uncertain if events around the world will let him pursue the agenda he is starting to outline. The election of 2004 was a relative rarity in that it was dominated by foreign policy, and there is no reason to believe that will change anytime soon. In the past week or so, there has been a startling disconnect between the benign images of a president speaking airily about bipartisan cooperation and domestic initiatives and, on the other side of the world, Iraqi insurgents and U.S. soldiers locked in lethal combat. In Fallujah, the unveiling of Operation Phantom Fury -- its name resembling a violent new video game -- will surely push No Child Left Behind even further onto the back burner.

It seems likely that Bush's second term and ultimate reputation will depend on the government that emerges not in this country but in Iraq. Not since LBJ have a president's fortunes been tied so closely to the spread of democracy in a contested territory far from American shores. After years and countless speeches promoting the urgency of this fight, President Bush has finally created the emergency that he always insisted was lurking in Iraq. But unfortunately, the crisis has become far more difficult to solve in that time, thanks to a series of epic blunders by the Pentagon and its civilian administrators.

A great deal more money and manpower will be needed before the last Americans can come home, if indeed they do come home in the next four years. I suspect that some token troop reductions will be offered as evidence that the conflict is over, in advance of the 2008 election, while National Guard units, reservists and full-time soldiers are deployed there for years to come, reducing enlistments and our ability to intervene elsewhere in the world. A foreign policy expert I spoke with recently argued that this is actually the best-case scenario -- because if we are tied down in Iraq for four years, it will reduce our ability to do harm to our reputation anywhere else. The worst-case scenario involves Wilsonian adventuring in Iran, Syria and North Korea -- a long shot even for this president.

Unlike most previous two-termers, Bush is young and healthy, and there is no reason to expect the diminution of faculties that slowed Eisenhower and Reagan. But Bush also lacks their capacity for sober reflection and self-correction, and it is impossible to imagine him giving a great counterintuitive speech like Ike's farewell address (which warned against "the military-industrial complex") or taking a bold risk for peace by negotiating with an enemy. (Reagan denounced Gorbachev's Soviet Union in language every bit as strident as Bush's "axis of evil.") One of the many disappointments of the first term was Bush's adamant refusal to negotiate with anyone, from the North Koreans to the Israelis and Palestinians. If Bush would like to get the world's attention, and build a genuine legacy, he could start on both those scores.

Contrary to the position he staked out in his debate with John Kerry on foreign policy, our partners in the six-party talks would like the United States to negotiate unilaterally with the North Koreans. (The South Koreans, losing patience with our incompetence, are quickly growing as anti-American as the North Koreans.) And the disequilibrium in the Middle East, so obvious at moments like Yasser Arafat's coma and subsequent death, is unseemly for a government like ours that loudly claims to care about promoting peace and freedom in the Islamic world. We can and must step in to help build peace between Israelis and Palestinians, especially after years of promising to follow a "road map" that now appears to be locked in the glove compartment. No one has ever said it would be easy. But hard steps are what make presidents great.

Meanwhile, the only progress toward defusing Iranian nuclear tensions is being achieved by European negotiators -- exactly the people we alienated in our noisy approach to Baghdad. Incidentally, while no one was paying attention last week, the prime minister of Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik, announced that Norway may finally join the European Union because he finds Bush's unilateralism so distasteful.

There are many other foreign policy crises that cry out for attention, but few will receive it in the months ahead. To cite the nearest example, inter-American relations have worsened significantly over the past four years. Some of it is a personal distaste for the Bush style, universally felt throughout the hemisphere, but much of it is a well-founded argument that the Bush team talks about democracy out of one side of its mouth while supporting coups (against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela), hiring old Contra supporters like Elliott Abrams, ignoring humanitarian crises in its backyard (Haiti), and nursing ancient grievances for political reasons (Cuba) when the rest of the world has forgotten about the Cold War.

U.S. engagement in the rest of the world is no better. In Africa, we are underfunding the AIDS commitments we made so grandiosely. And have we ever looked weaker than we do in Sudan? We are losing to tribesmen riding horses -- tribesmen who might as well be living in the first century. We may spend more on our military budget than the next 15 nations combined, but a squalid humanitarian crisis, far from supply lines, is all it takes to show how ineffectual our ability to project force truly is. We are essentially powerless to stop the crisis in Darfur, limited by many factors -- our overextended military, our slipping prestige and our lack of political will. Others like it will surely follow in a world that is growing more, not less restive.

Our relationships with China and India have not declined as drastically, but they are watching our actions in Iraq carefully, and in half a century, when we are asking them to exercise restraint in either economic or military matters, they will take great pleasure in pointing out our own example to us. Around the world, in places ranging from Turkey to the United Kingdom, some of our most valued allies are deeply skeptical of U.S. motives, and as countless surveys have proven, there has been a staggering decline in U.S. support in every country on earth except Russia and Israel. The affection the world once held for America is melting faster than the Arctic ice caps.

Although Bush is famous for declaring his lack of interest in the judgment of history, surely at some level he cares about it. If he did care, he would take serious steps to improve key bilateral relationships -- not just with high-level diplomatic meetings but through the kind of personal attention only a president can provide. He would stand in the open air, before large crowds of the world's people, and speak from the heart about what America stands for, renewing our commitment to the kind of global vision the U.S. was once trusted to provide. He would defend what he believes in in the free marketplace of ideas, rather than retreating behind a podium to give a canned speech about "freedom's march."

Are any of these things likely to occur? Stranger things have happened. But with American troops laying waste to Fallujah and problems in Iraq multiplying faster than we can solve them, the odds seem even longer than the late afternoon shadows in the desert. An American failure in the Middle East will certainly help the chances of Democrats already striving toward 2008, but it hardly bodes well for the future of democracy, or the nation supposedly dedicated to it.

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