But today, after a brief stop at an Army hospital in San Antonio to visit wounded soldiers, Bush is scheduled to return to the White House earlier than usual from his break and start a campaign to set the tone for 2006 and, perhaps, the remainder of his presidency.
As part of an ambitious strategy the White House has mapped out for the next four weeks, Bush has scheduled two major speeches ahead of the State of the Union address, which is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 31. By the time he appears before Congress, Bush's aides are hoping, two of the immediate challenges the president faces - the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel Alito and the permanent renewal of the Patriot Act - will be behind him.
On Thursday at the White House, he is meeting with previous secretaries of state and defense to try to make the case that after the recent raucous debate over Iraq, there are fewer differences than meet the eye on what to do there next. It is a theme that his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, struck in a little-noted speech just as Bush was getting out of Washington, where he described the ''common ground'' that has emerged on training Iraqi forces and building a cohesive government there.
''We've listened to our critics and are already pursuing many of their proposals,'' he insisted, though he drew the line at pulling out troops in the near future. Bush is expected to hit the same themes.
After his days of silence here, Bush began to give the country a taste of the tone he has in mind. In his New Year's radio address, delivered Saturday morning, he argued that in Iraq, American forces were overcoming earlier setbacks - a reference to early errors in Iraq that he was long loath to acknowledge, but that White House officials now boast was the key to reversing the worst slide in his approval ratings since the beginning of his presidency.
On the economic front he insisted that, even with tax cuts, his government was ''staying on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009,'' but he made no mention of the fact that his Treasury secretary, John Snow, asked Congress on Thursday to raise the debt limit again, the fourth time in Bush's presidency, so that the government can borrow more money, largely for increases in military and entitlement programs.
William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, who helped lead the Republican revolt that forced Bush to withdraw Harriet Miers as a nominee for the Supreme Court in the fall, said that in most years January is a month for planning the State of the Union speech and laying out the year's agenda. But this January, he said, is different.
''The notion that Bush could or should unveil a new domestic agenda at the State of the Union speech is really ridiculous,'' Kristol said. ''He has to play the cards he has been dealt and play a winning hand with those cards,'' on issues including Iraq, the linked debate over the Patriot Act and wiretapping at home, and the Alito nomination.
