IF PRESIDENT BUSH HOPES the "shake-up" of his administration initiated last week will re-energize his listless presidency, he's bound to be disappointed. A far more audacious makeover is needed -- one that sends Vice President Dick Cheney into early retirement.
Second terms are notoriously difficult for presidents. For President Bush, it has been disastrous. His swaggering November 2004 news conference -- at which he bragged "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it" -- seems from another era. Whatever political capital existed he has squandered with the Iraq war, the Valerie Plame leak inquiry and his ill-advised plan to partly privatize Social Security. His one victory -- getting two reliable conservative jurists on the U.S. Supreme Court -- is no doubt an enduring one. But there's nothing else.
Hence the yearning for a fresh start, the illusion of a third term. Ronald Reagan, another president hobbled by a second-term scandal, did manage to jump-start his presidency in its last years by bringing new players into his inner circle and engaging in ambitious arms-reduction talks with the Soviets.
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