Back Into History

As for Bush himself, he is curtailing his traditional August working vacation at the ranch so that he can barnstorm before the midterm elections. Their outlook thus far seems so ominous for the G.O.P. that one presidential adviser wants Bush to beef up his counsel's office for the tangle of investigations that a Democrat-controlled House might pursue.

With the Democrats determined to make a major issue of Bush's foreign policy competence, the President seems ready to leap at the chance to refresh the landscape and make his own history. He had deliberately diverged from the Middle East course set by his two predecessors when he hired an unabashedly pro-Israel staff. "I'm all for conferences," Bush said in a 2004 appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "just so long as the conferences produce something." George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker were seen as heroes by some Palestinians; Bill Clinton made the quest for Middle East peace a centerpiece of his legacy project. Bush aides say the times were different then and the vaunted progress under Clinton turned out to be what one called "a false stability."

Does George W. Bush have dreams of presiding over a grand Middle East peace deal at Camp David or some other photogenic spot, like the Red Sea summit of his first term? Aides say he is content for now to take steps toward transforming the region in less obvious but, they believe, more fundamental and lasting ways. So Bush today is in the precarious position of putting his hopes in a region that has yielded only heartbreak.