The president of the United States, arguably the single most powerful man in the world, with armies and navies and hundreds of thousands of employees at his beck and call, still has to stop every four years and ask the people of the nation for their permission to remain in office.

This president, George W. Bush, woke up on Election Day, like the rest of us, not knowing if he would retain that massive authority or if it would be taken from him by millions of people he has never met.

It now appears, as we go to press, that Bush has faced the voters and received a significant, if hardly overwhelming, vote of confidence for another term in office.

Not that the president's apparent victory over hard-charging challenger John Kerry is the end of anything. It is the beginning of a difficult journey in which a re-appointed leader must learn from the errors of his administration so far and avoid making new ones.

A second Bush administration must be constructed, not in the arrogant way the president moved from his first, even more hotly contested, election, but in the humble, limited way he promised in his first campaign. The hope here is that the term-limited president, freed of any need to placate his far-right base, would unite a divided electorate and a suspicious world.

The most pressing matter, of course, is to extricate the United States from its role as occupier of Iraq, hopefully with credible elections, in such a way that the smashed nation does not become even more of a haven for terrorists than it already is.

The president should also present us with a new Cabinet and, when openings occur, appoint Supreme Court justices and other judges who are so clearly skilled and qualified as to command the assent of the still sharply divided Senate.

The government's penchant for secrecy and disregard for the human rights of Americans and foreigners alike, even in the service of the new and necessary struggle against terrorism, must be replaced by the unwavering respect for the rule of law.

The inseparably linked problems of deficit spending and health care, a combination that threatens a colossal fiscal train wreck, must be faced with clear-eyed determination.

The hostile disregard of honest science in favor of corporate interests, which threaten to at once deprive us of needed energy and despoil our precious environment, must be reversed.

The founders' design that presidential terms will have an end and a beginning, with the people given a specific role in deciding who will lead them, grants us the much-needed opportunity to engage in that most American of endeavors.

To begin again.