He will soon announce his Social Security reform commission. His education reforms are moving through Congress. Gone is the incendiary, poisonous rhetoric that used to flow back and forth between the White House and Congress. Bush is working closely with Democratic brokers, such as Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana, to hammer out a tax-cut deal. The process is working and moving forward.
Gridlock is dead.
But a more comprehensive evaluation of Bush's presidency is yet to come. The report card he gets during the August recess, after the next three months of legislative wrangling, will be a much more important measure of his leadership as the nation's chief executive.