Confident Bush Vows to Move Aggressively

In citing his foreign policy priorities, Bush listed the fight against terrorism first but refused to estimate the cost of continuing operations in Iraq. (Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

"Our commanders will have that which they need to complete their missions," he said.

Bush asserted that democracy is still possible in Iraq and throughout the Middle East: "If we are interested in protecting our country for the long term, the best way to do so is to promote freedom and democracy."

He said he will continue to work for a Palestinian state coexisting peacefully with Israel, saying that when he laid out that vision in the Rose Garden in 2002, he "meant it when I said it, and I mean it now."

Other administration officials said they expect relations with Iran to dominate the foreign policy agenda. The administration has accused Iran of harboring terrorists and running a nuclear weapons program.

Bush made no effort to hide his high spirits, teasing reporters and calling on them by last name only, in the fashion of a football coach. He has always chafed at reporters' tendency to ask follow-ups and to string multiple questions into one, and yesterday he announced that he will no longer permit it. "Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule," he said.

The news conference's most reflective moments concerned the reaction of former president George H.W. Bush to his son's achievement of the reelection he was denied. The president recalled that his father, who spent election night in the White House, was still sitting upstairs at 3:30 a.m. as returns came in. Kerry did not concede until later that day.

"I finally said, 'Go to bed,' " Bush recalled. "He was awaiting the outcome and was hopeful that we would go over and be able to talk to our supporters, and it just didn't happen that way."

Bush said that when his father woke up, he asked him to come by the Oval Office before heading home to Houston.

"We had a good talk," the president said. "There was some uncertainty about that morning as to when the election would actually end. And it wasn't clear at that point in time, so I never got to see him face to face to watch his, I guess, pride in his tired eyes as his son got a second term. I did talk to him, and he was relieved. I told him to get a nap. I was worried about him staying up too late."

Presidential advisers said Bush is relishing the prospect of a freer hand with Congress, as the expanded margin of GOP control will give him more flexibility to pursue his policies.

"After hundreds of speeches and three debates and interviews and the whole process, where you keep basically saying the same thing over and over again, that when you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress," he said.

Bush hedged when asked about changes in his Cabinet, and declined to speculate about possible nominees to the Supreme Court.

For the second day in a row, Bush said he plans to reach out to his opponents, joking at the start of the 40-minute session, "I pledged to reach out to the whole nation, and today I'm proving that I'm willing to reach out to everybody by including the White House press corps."

But one key adviser said the White House has calculated there is little to be gained from courting Democrats, since the expected fights over Supreme Court nominations would just undo the goodwill.

"This isn't a guy who pivots," said a presidential adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity so White House officials will continue to talk candidly to him. "There's no point in a lot of outreach in the next 90 days that would be rendered moot by the first retirement from the court, and he's not going to do it."

Another adviser said after speaking to Bush's top aides, "They feel the Bush brand is strong, and they feel no need to re-brand him."

Bush has held the fewest news conferences of any president since records have been kept. This was Bush's 16th solo news conference. At this point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had held 42 news conferences and Bush's father had held 83, according to figures compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University.

The meeting was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House -- a setting that is more formal than the briefing room but less imposing than the East Room, the traditional site of prime-time news conferences.

Bush said he feels refreshed, both by the outcome and by the sleep he got after a marathon night that some of his aides in what is ordinarily an early-to-bed White House were calling "the Republican Woodstock."

Staff writer John F. Harris contributed to this report.