Is this what all second-term presidents do at the end of their tenure?

Try to bring about Middle East peace? President Clinton did it. As the New York Times reports, President Bush seems to be headed that way too:

President Bush announced an initiative on Monday to shore up the Palestinian president and to begin building a Palestinian state, signaling that his administration will use its remaining months to make a major push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Bush called for a regional peace conference.... He exhorted Israel’s Arab neighbors to open talks with Israel and to show leadership by “ending the fiction that Israel does not exist” and “stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media.”

He also urged them to send cabinet-level visitors to Israel, a request directed implicitly at America’s closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, which has refused to do so...

He even took a rare jab at Israel, using the word “occupation” to refer to the Israeli presence in the West Bank.

As the Times points out, this is a "pivotal shift" in the Bush administration's previous policy:

For several years, the Bush administration has eschewed direct engagement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and has refused to press Israel to dismantle settlements or to sit down at the table with Palestinian counterparts to discuss a future Palestinian state.

But now the United States is mired in Iraq and looking for a way to build good will among Arab allies that have pushed for America to re-engage in Middle East peace talks. Administration officials also are hoping to capitalize on growing anti-Hamas sentiment among leaders in Egypt and Jordan. Both of those countries have diplomatic relations with Israel; the big question remains whether Saudi Arabia, which does not, will embrace the administration’s approach

Maybe I'm wrong that this focus on Middle East peace is limited to second-term presidents. As the Times recalls:

The most notable previous Middle East peace conference was a regional meeting held in Madrid in 1991 under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union and the United States during the administration of the first President Bush.

Anyway, let's hope this second Bush administration's late-term peace processing doesn't just lead to more violence - the end result of previous administrations' efforts.