For Bush, Some Good News Amid the Bad

CRAWFORD, Tex., Oct. 5 -- President Bush flew to the family ranch over the weekend after weeks of bad news back in Washington, from the nation's ongoing financial crisis to polls showing his popularity hitting new lows.

Yet, to the White House, the tide of negative headlines has obscured a series of significant legislative victories for a president wrongly written off as a lame duck.

After a rough start and a setback in the House, for example, the White House managed to get its historic $700 billion financial rescue plan passed by Congress last week over strong opposition from many conservative House Republicans. The White House also won other legislative victories in recent weeks that, in quieter times, might have attracted wider notice.

Take oil drilling. Bush over the summer lifted an executive ban on offshore oil drilling along much of the coastal United States and urged Congress to do the same with its own prohibition.

Democrats initially scoffed at the idea, saying it would threaten the environment while having little immediate effect on oil supplies. But the White House and Republicans seized on the topic as a potentially winning issue in November, exemplified by chants of "Drill, baby, drill!" at the Republican National Convention.

The pressure led jittery Democrats to shift course late last month, allowing an annual drilling ban to expire as part of a spending package passed in the House and Senate.

Congress also gave final approval last week to a landmark nuclear agreement between India and the United States, a deal that has been in the works for years and has been fiercely opposed by nuclear proliferation experts.

The deal, which is due to be signed by Bush in Washington on Wednesday, opens up nuclear trade with India for the first time since New Delhi conducted a nuclear test three decades ago. The measure ended up passing easily in Congress and is certain to have lasting ramifications.

To White House officials, such victories underscore a year in which Bush has repeatedly pushed through major legislation on Capitol Hill regardless of troubles in the polls or the overwhelming focus on the presidential race. Examples include the bipartisan stimulus package passed early in the year, an Iraq war spending measure without troop-withdrawal timelines and a $40 billion expansion of the president's landmark global AIDS program. Many experts consider the AIDS initiative one of Bush's most significant foreign policy and humanitarian achievements.

White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel said Bush has "confronted major challenges with bold leadership and significant proposals" during his final year in office.

"These are front-page achievements often overlooked by the mainstream Beltway media," he added.

And to hear Bush tell it, he has no intention of slowing down in his final months. "You know, we got a couple more hard months to go, and obviously we've got to deal with this financial situation," Bush told reporters on Saturday after a visit to one of his boyhood homes in Texas. ".There's a lot of work to be done," he added.