His failure to get anything close to what he had
demanded from a Congress controlled by his fellow
Republicans may dog the president as he endures what the
White House is calling an unusually heavy travel schedule
designed to help the GOP avert the loss of the House or
the Senate on Nov. 7.
The first leg of his three-day Western campaign trip
took Bush yesterday to Reno, Nev., where he helped
Republican congressional candidate Dean Heller raise
$360,000. Today, he will stump in Stockton, El Dorado
Hills and Los Angeles before leaving California for
Arizona and Colorado and returning tomorrow to Washington.
Advisers to the president insist Bush will not be
haunted in his travels by his lack of success with
Congress on immigration, Social Security and tax reform.
They say he will try again on all three priorities in the
next Congress. But as the last hopes for the White House's
much-sought-after “comprehensive” immigration reform faded
last week and Congress raced to an election-year
adjournment, it was clear things had not worked out quite
the way the president had hoped when he celebrated his
re-election in 2004 with boastful talk about all he would
be able to accomplish now that he was armed with a
self-proclaimed.
Less than 48 hours after voters gave him a second term,
Bush had told reporters, “I earned capital in the
campaign, political capital. And now I intend to spend
it.”
“He did have capital in the bank, but it didn't pay off
for him,” said Stephen Hess, a former Eisenhower and Nixon
aide who works for George Washington University and the
Brookings Institution.
Immigration, in particular, proved damaging to the
president's standing because his demand for a bill that
coupled a border security crackdown with a “path to
citizenship” for illegal immigrants angered many
Republicans.
“For a man who came to Washington claiming to be a
uniter, not a divider, he ended up dividing his own
party,” Hess said.
“There is a general recognition that something he
pushed went nowhere, yet his party is in control of
Congress,” said Steve Smith, director of the Weidenbaum
Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at
Washington University in St. Louis. “This is a case where
he has frustrated a significant number of Americans –
Republicans on one side, because he pushed a policy they
didn't really support, and Democrats who probably wanted
to see his policy enacted but he didn't stick with the
cause.”
In the end, Bush had to swallow elements of immigration
reform that only addressed the need for greater border
security, including a 700-mile border wall and new
sanctions against cross-border tunnel builders. But the
White House press secretary, Tony Snow, insists that was
not a retreat or a failure.
Calling Bush “a patient guy,” Snow said at a breakfast
session with reporters: “The president is still absolutely
determined to press ahead with comprehensive reform.
“When a president is faced with a situation like this,
they can take a realistic approach at what you can
accomplish. But you also do not give up your long-term
goal. The thing about the president is he sets strategic
goals and he understands tactically sometimes you're going
to have to adjust based on the realities on the ground.”
But Smith said the White House is just spinning a
defeat.
“He's trying to make the best of a bad situation,”
Smith said of the president. “He put an awful lot of
political capital into immigration reform. He spent a
great deal of time traveling the country and giving
speeches on his more comprehensive policy – as he did
earlier on Social Security – and he failed.”
At his regular media briefing yesterday, Snow said it
was way too early to count out the president's domestic
agenda. “There are two more years in this administration
after the new Congress has been seated, and in those two
years, the president intends to be aggressive,” he said.
Snow did not address what might happen to that agenda
if congressional control flips to the Democrats. But it is
that possibility that will keep the president out of
Washington for most of the next month.

Reuters contributed to this report.