By Tim Shipman
George W Bush's presidency is effectively over on the home front two years before he is due to quit the White House, according to former aides and allies.
The root cause of George W Bush's weakness is the Democrats' seizure of both houses of Congress in November's mid-term elections
David Frum, a former White House speech writer, and Jim Nuzzo, a West Wing aide to Mr Bush's father, have both told The Sunday Telegraph that the president cannot achieve anything more in domestic politics and is now a captive of international events.
Mr Nuzzo branded Mr Bush a "lame duck" who had forfeited the support of senior Republicans.
They spoke out after a week in which a former member of Mr Bush's inner circle launched a withering description of how the president had "become more secluded and bubbled-in" with a shrinking band of loyalists.
Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist of the 2004 re-election campaign, said that Mr Bush had lost his once fabled "gut-level bond with the American people" and called for him to respond to a growing public desire to pull out of Iraq.
The sense of a presidency unravelling was reinforced last week when it was revealed that several of Mr Bush's key aides were to depart the White House, including deputy national security adviser, Meghan O'Sullivan, the architect of the surge strategy to boost troop numbers in Iraq, and Peter Wehner, a strategic thinker who sold Mr Bush's ideas to the power players in Washington.
Mr Frum said: "The Bush White House has always been a strong band of brothers. But the same things that bring your triumphs also bring your tragedy. There is little difference of views. If you're wrong, it's hard to change direction."
Domestically, Mr Bush is seen to have failed on two pressing issues. His plan to overhaul social security policy, once seen as potentially a key part of his legacy, is stillborn, and he is at odds with his own party over plans to relax immigration rules.
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The root cause of his weakness is the Democrats' seizure of both the Senate and House of Representatives in November's mid-term elections. Without sufficient support to push legislation through Congress, the president was finished, said Mr Frum. "There's no domestic agenda," he said. "There's no possibility at all of the president advancing anything that is acceptable to both the Republicans and Democrats."
Mr Nuzzo, who served as policy director for George Bush, added: "He's a lame duck. Any affirmative domestic policy is at an end. Republicans have lost patience with the Bush administration. At this point the only parts of the presidential office he can fulfil are those that do not require co-operation with the legislative branch - which means foreign policy."
But even on this front, Mr Bush is facing a challenge to his authority, with the resurgent Democrats trying to run a parallel foreign policy from Capitol Hill, threatening to cut off spending on the war in Iraq unless Mr Bush sets a deadline to bring American troops home.
Last week, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, travelled to the Middle East for talks with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, trespassing on territory usually reserved for the president. Some believe the speaker broke the law by making the trip. Vice-President Dick Cheney accused her of "bad behaviour" and said: "She doesn't speak for the United States."
But the fact that Miss Pelosi went at all is seen as an example of Mr Bush's waning authority as he spends Easter weekend at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Mr Bush suffered a damaging new setback yesterday with the resignation of a senior aide to his embattled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales. Monica Goodling, who was a White House liaison officer, is thought to know compromising details of what Mr Bush's senior lieutenants knew about Mr Gonzales's decision to sack eight US attorneys, a scandal that sparked claims of a political attempt to hijack the judiciary.
Miss Goodling had asserted her Fifth Amendment rights not to testify to a congressional investigation for fear of incriminating herself. She could now be granted immunity from prosecution to tell all.
What most concerns Mr Bush's remaining allies is that his focus on Iraq has distracted attention from other international problems, including the increasingly authoritarian nature of Russia and the threat of Iran's nuclear programme.
Another former White House aide said the administration had "taken its eye off the ball with Russia". He added: "I don't want to wake up in 10 years' time and read that we actually lost the Cold War."
Another conservative, who met last week with senior officials at the White House and the Pentagon, warned: "George Bush's presidency will be defined not by Iraq but by whether the Middle East goes nuclear."
Far from sympathising, senior Republicans blame the president for losing the election. They are furious that he refused to sack his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, before the mid-terms and then let him go after the defeat.
Mr Nuzzo said: "At that point an awful lot of loyal Republicans said: 'They're only in it for themselves.' Had Rumsfeld retired earlier, I have no doubt the Republican House could have been saved and certainly the Senate."
The influential Right-wing commentator Robert Novak wrote last week: "Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress - not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment."
Last week, Mr Bush rejected calls to withdraw from Iraq, saying that to leave "before the job is done" would lead to new terrorist attacks on US soil.
Perhaps more telling was his recent comment at the annual White House press corps dinner: "A year ago, my approval ratings were in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn and my vice-president had shot someone. Ah, those were the good old days."
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