Gary Wills suggests that Barack Obama settle for a one-term presidency and make it something to be proud of *--i.e., by ending a couple of nasty and persistent wars. He set me to thinking about other one-term presidencies. I can't find a strong pattern here. There several--Carter, Hoover--who seem to have been just not very good at the job. I can think of at least one--Buchanan--who was really awful. And at least one--Coolidge--who simply didn't want it all that much.
But perhaps the closest comparison would by the hypothetical mirror image of Obama's hypothetical stop-the-war program. That would be President James K. Polk, who started a war (against Mexico), won it, and went home (and died, perhaps partly from overwork).
It's probably not a comparison that either Polk or Obama would fancy but you'd have to say this: Polk changed the landscape of America more than any other president from Jefferson to Lincoln. It's a record not to be dismissed lightly.
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*"A One-Term President?" New York Review of Books December 3, 2009, 8.
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