( CNN ) -- The period since September 11 , 2001 , will never be described by any historian as a golden age of U.S. foreign policy . I know . I have just written a history on it , and it 's not pretty . Since 9/11 , the United States has swung unsettlingly from one set of flawed policies to another . First , the unilateralist excess of the first term of the Bush administration ; its signature error was the invasion of Iraq . Then , the reactive swing of Barack Obama , toward disengagement and dithering . In a tragic irony , a war in Iraq may someday also be seen as the enduring symbol of his errors . Some of the nation 's problems come from nearly 15 years of a heightened sense of vulnerability . We 're frayed and on edge and have let dysfunctional politics get ahead of national interests . But others are tied to human errors that can be fixed . The genius of the U.S. system is that it is built to change . Obama finds himself at the end of a string of errors of judgment and execution . These have contributed to damaged relations or crises ranging from those in Syria and Iraq to Libya to Egypt and Israel , from Ukraine to Afghanistan to Africa . They include crises at our own borders and strained relations with our allies over NSA eavesdropping . But Obama is not condemned to further errors . What he does need to produce constructive change however , is a quality rare and vital in any leader : the ability to recognize when one has made mistakes . Who to turn to as a model ? The best example may well be George W. Bush himself . Because whatever mistakes Bush made in office -- and they were many -- in his second term , Bush recognized the urgent need for change and instituted a sweeping reordering of his administration , its policies and priorities . He replaced his chief of staff , secretaries of state , defense and Treasury , as well as his national security adviser , and he modified the role of the powerful vice president . He also changed his own engagement on key issues like Iraq , instituting weekly conference calls with his leaders on the ground . And he rewrote key policies , launching the surge in Iraq , initiating the `` light footprint '' approach to fighting terror later adopted by Obama and responding to the financial crisis . In region after region , the results were better , including on social issues like fighting AIDS in Africa , in relations with allies , in results in war zones or in deals like the India nuclear accord . He also actively sought to bring new , outside perspectives into his second term team , a stark contrast to the Obama approach . Cabinet secretaries in Bush 's second term , such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates ( later Obama 's defense secretary ) or Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson or new military commanders he appointed had not been part of his inner circle . Bush 's willingness to admit errors and embrace change may have stemmed from his own failures and struggles earlier in life : as a congressional candidate , in the oil business , as a baseball team owner and even with alcohol . To get ahead , he had to acknowledge his shortcomings and fix them . He also turned this ability to see his way through tough times into a plus in another important role he embraced , that of a kind of coach-in-chief . Obama is seen as aloof from his Cabinet . All the Bush Cabinet members with whom I spoke told a strikingly different story . Ambassador James Jeffrey , who served as deputy national security adviser to Bush and then as Obama 's Iraq ambassador , tells a story of one top Bush economic official having a moment of crisis and doubt in the darkest days of the financial catastrophe . Jeffrey listened as Bush bucked up his aide , restoring his confidence , telling him he was the best person for the job , letting him know he would back him on key decisions . This was in stark contrast to the White House-centric Obama approach that has left Cabinet officers feeling sidelined . It is easy to dismiss such stories when viewed in the context of politics or the very real , and in some cases historically significant , errors of the Bush years . Still , if President Obama is to begin to grow in office , he would be wise to look beyond politically inspired caricatures to see what worked for the man who occupied the Oval Office before him . Obama has his own life experience , of course . He will never be like Bush , in ways both good and bad . But what he may see is that at a moment of comparable foreign policy strains and dysfunctions , Bush was not content to give up or to punt to the future or play the blame game . He knew that in the American system , big change is sometimes needed and that it would never happen unless he did what no one else could do : Stand up to himself -- the President of the United States -- and demand he admit his mistakes and lead administration-wide change from within .
David Rothkopf : Both Bush and Obama have overseen unsettled era of post 9/11 foreign policy . Comment: How ? Take page from Bush . He cleaned Cabinet in term 2 , admitted errors , he says . Rothkopf : Obama must create change from within his administration .