THEY served pineapple upside-down cake for dessert that snowy evening at Camp David, the last weekend of President George W. Bush’s first year in office. I remember thinking it seemed fitting. “What a year,” President Bush said during dinner. “Sometimes it seems like seven,” replied Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor. But no one else said much. The emotions had been too raw, too intense. The sudden horror of Sept. 11 had changed the course of the presidency, making America’s national security the president’s relentless focus. “Continued vigilance” were the watchwords, as we fully expected additional attacks.

We had seen the president’s strong leadership as he rallied the country, Congress and each of us to confront the threat. “Let me tell you how to do your job today,” I remember him saying to me early one morning, directing me to plan an announcement. We had watched Mr. Bush make the most profound decision a commander in chief can make, committing American lives to battle in Afghanistan. We had witnessed the fall of the Taliban and worked to calm the panic of anthrax attacks.

Image Credit... Jason Polan

As President Obama is learning, the first year of a presidency is one in which the rhetoric of campaigning collides with the hard reality of governing. As President Bush took office, the economy was falling into recession; we passed tax cuts to try to stimulate jobs. We had celebrated moments of great achievement: overwhelming bipartisan approval for education reforms. We had wrestled with the profound moral ramifications of stem cell research. And we had experienced the thrills of the presidency: the drama of the first meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia; the visit by Mexico’s president, Vicente Fox, which involved a fireworks display so spectacular that Condi Rice joked we could be “testing the missile defense system.”