a fterword 363Bush demonstrated what my research identifi ed as a fundamental
characteristic of wartime presidential power: presidents begin confl icts
with extraordinary freedom of action, only to see it dissipate quickly.
The initial choices a president makes necessarily constrain his dis-
cretion; subsequent decisions further narrow the fi eld of possibilities.
Th is loss of capacity becomes most acute when presidents turn to peace-
building, their eff orts to shape the postwar order they hope to establish.
Often they wait too long to begin to plan for what will happen when
the guns fall silent. Few wartime presidents have been alert to the inev-
itable decline in their capacity to alter direction, shape outcomes, or
infl uence other key political actors. Even if they were, they could not
escape the dynamic; at best (as in the case of Franklin Roosevelt), they
could recognize it and adapt.
Th e book I have written, then, has taken a very diff erent turn from
the one I fi rst conceived. Instead of taking its place on the bookshelf
of liberal laments about excesses of executive authority, this volume
has a distinctly conservative cast. It expresses a profound sense of the
limits of power. Presidents enter wars believing they have in their hands
the military instruments to accomplish their most ambitious political
goals, sometimes on a truly visionary scale. Th ink of Woodrow Wilson
banishing war and bestowing self-determination on oppressed peoples,
Roosevelt establishing a benign liberal order that would encompass all
the major powers (including Stalin’s Soviet Union), or Bush remaking
Iraq virtually overnight into the kind of society never seen before in the
region. In each instance, they have fallen short, sometimes by a vast
margin. Th eir power has misled them, and us, too.