Bush to pursue "small-bore" domestic agenda for remainder of presidency

And to think, he used to deplore the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

White House counselor Ed Gillespie said the death of a bipartisan immigration plan last summer convinced Bush advisers that they had to readjust their approach through the final phase of his presidency, focusing on ambitious goals on the international front while downscaling to more small-bore but achievable initiatives domestically.

"We realized at that point that those big legislative reforms were unlikely to pass this Congress and to focus on some administrative actions and also some things maybe we could do that would have real impact on folks in their daily lives," Gillespie said in an interview for washingtonpost.com's PostTalk program. While not ruling it out, he said "the legislative avenue is not a likely route to get some major things done."

Gillespie whines that a "hostile congress" is keeping Bush from doing some of the high-concept domestic stuff that he would like to do, like immigration reform.

Maybe Gillespie forgets that it wasn't hostile Democrats who scuttled immigration reform. It was members of the president's own party, who chose the short-term payoff of placating their nativist base over the long-term benefits of comprehensive reform.

But the immigration bill notwithstanding, working with people who don't always agree with you is part of governing. In fact, you could say that it is all of governing. If Bush isn't willing to do that, fine, but maybe he should have told us that when he applied for job.