So there he was, wheelchair-bound but with the old sense of style, short of breath but with the old intuitive grace: George H.W. Bush, 89 years old, back in the White House, there to mark the 5,000th Points of Light Award and to remind us there are second acts in American lives -- and oftentimes they are extraordinary.Many American presidents have had remarkable second lives. John Quincy Adams, like Bush a member of an indispensable American political dynasty, followed his White House years with a star turn in the House and distinguished himself as a man of courage and integrity by winning freedom for Africans who mutinied on the slave ship Amistad and refusing payment for arguing their case before the Supreme Court.Later, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, like Adams single-term presidents, won the world's applause as advocates for human rights, ranging from freedom from hunger in European war zones to freedom from fear at the polling place. Bush is our latest living example of how time can burnish a president's profile.