Both US and UK soldiers, and the Iraqi population, might be better off today if Bush and Blair, or a close associate of either, were running for office again.

One of the most common criticisms of politicians is that their actions are dictated by electoral calculation: the tax cuts timed to expand wage packets just before polling day, the shiny new hospital in the marginal constituency. George Bush and Tony Blair, though, currently represent a fascinating challenge to that allegation. For the first time, Britain and America are simultaneously being run by leaders who will not be standing in the next election and who have no close colleague or friend they would like to be heir to their office.

So, if it's true that the need to get yourself or your party back in power makes politicians behave selfishly and cynically, then it logically follows that the US and the UK should at the moment be experiencing the purest and most selfless leadership they have ever seen. For the first time, we are witnessing an experiment into the kind of politics you get when legislators are freed from any need to grease the people's palms. The biggest of our clinical trials tests whether the recent decisions of the president or the prime minister would have been different if they or a trusted deputy were scheduled for the judgement of the public. Would, for example, Bush have committed an extra 21,500 troops to Iraq this week if he or Dick Cheney were running your office again?

 Logic suggests that no politician whose job prospects still depended on public opinion would sign an order that so goes against the tone of the phone-in shows and the mood of the legislature. But that doesn't mean Bush's escalation of the American presence is an example of a selfless decision taken without political calculation. Even when they have surrendered the possibility of further office, politicians are always running for something: the last big votes of biography and posterity. Indeed, despite our instinctive cynicism about the effect of electoral pressure, leaders may be at their most dangerous when thinking only of themselves.

Bush's last big throw of the dice in Iraq is only possible because there is no one near him - not even an ambitious vice-president with his eye on the White House - with any greedy personal reason to stay his hand. The tempting comparison is Lyndon Johnson who, almost 40 years ago, opted out of the 1968 race, once defeat seemed an inevitability, to concentrate on bringing peace to Vietnam. Bush is offered by the constitution what was given to Johnson only through humiliation: a spell in which, theoretically, he should be able to make decisions from the perspective purely of military good-sense.

Johnson, though, was tempered in his decisions by an obligation to his deputy, Hubert Humphrey, who was leading the Democrat ticket in his place. Having chosen a cardiac catastrophe as his running-mate, and with brother Jeb declining to run, Bush is in the almost unique position of owing loyalty only to his own place in history. But only the most charitable observer would assume that this total freedom from external pressure leads a man to selfless decisions.

Blair makes an interesting contrast, having supported Bush this time with words rather than bodies. While it's possible that he is far less committed to a premiership of his apparent heir Gordon Brown than was Johnson to a Humphrey presidency, Blair's ability to act in Iraq or elsewhere during his election-free period of leadership is limited by parliamentary majorities and the fragile timetable for hand-over more or less agreed with Gordon Brown. While Blair doesn't have to worry about the next election, his colleagues do. Bush's cussedness in his dead-duck months also casts doubt on another conventional wisdom of modern politics: that term limits are inevitably beneficial. Observing the exhaustion and default policies of Blair's third administration, I've argued in the past for a two-term cut-off in British politics. But the twilight of the current American president shows that imposing an off-switch on power brings other problems. A dead-duck leader may result in more dead soldiers.

Numerous crime novelists have used the plot of the terminally ill patient who dedicates their final months to settling matters for which they will never be called to account. We are seeing now - especially in Washington - the political equivalent of the man who has nothing to lose and needs think only of his own legacy and satisfaction. The effect is to lead us to the quite counter-intuitive conclusion that the need to be re-elected is in some ways a useful discipline for politicians.

Although they would be highly surprised by this historical paradox, both US and UK soldiers, and the Iraqi population, might be better off today if Bush and Blair, were running for office again.

Mark Lawson

The Guardian

London