White House counsellor Ed Gillespie said the president’s team is not panicked about dwindling time but hopes to push steadily toward some goals that will bear fruit before the end of the administration.

The focus on passing time and the coming judgment of history is common at this point in a two-term presidency, of course. In his final months in office, Bill Clinton also launched an intense effort to solve the Middle East conflict only to have Camp David talks collapse. Joel P. Johnson, who was Clinton’s senior adviser in the last part of his presidency, remembers his boss holding “a whip and a chair” trying to force as much change before surrendering the Oval Office. “It’s on your mind every day because you know how long it takes to create a policy and build a campaign around it and enact it or in some way force change before your administration is over,” Johnson said.

Yet the most ambitious items on Bush’s second-term domestic agenda have died, most notably his ideas for restructuring social security and immigration laws. “They’re off the table. They’re done. Didn’t work,” said a senior official.

One of the other things is climate change. Bush once expressed doubt that human activity has anything to do with warming and renounced the Kyoto treaty imposing mandatory limits on greenhouse emissions. On Friday, he summoned representatives from the 15 nations that produce the most greenhouse gases. Senior European officials said they appreciate the newfound interest. “Some months ago, there was no discussion of climate,” German Environmental Minister Siegmar Gabriel said on Thursday.

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