“He’s in a greatly weakened state, and he’s playing the best hand he can.”

For a president whose muscular assertions of executive authority had overshadowed Congress for years, it was a striking indicator of how the balance of power in Washington has shifted away from him.

It was probably mostly the upset tummy Bush was suffering from the other day, but his voice was that of an exhausted, defeated man.  The immigration bill suffer a definitive setback.

As Jim Rutenberg writes in a New York Times analysis of the president's position, the stagnation is clear.

...The White House has similarly been through a sharp reversal on the domestic politics of the Iraq war. After receiving a lift last month in the defeat of Democratic efforts to link war finances to Iraq withdrawal dates, the White House acknowledged Friday that it could not renominate Mr. Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, because of expected opposition on Capitol Hill.

...Mr. Bush had long since given up on what was supposed to be the primary domestic goal of his second term, an overhaul of Social Security.

...Even some close allies were surprised by how Mr. Bush’s advocacy for immigration had seemed to hurt his cause within his party when, in a speech in Georgia last week, he said those opposed to the bill didn’t “want to do what’s right for America.” The statement infuriated Mr. Bush’s usually reliable allies on talk radio, in blogs and in Congress, galvanizing the right against his plan all the more.

...His own party’s gradual edging away from him was also on display Tuesday, during the most recent debate among the Republican presidential candidates.

Bottom line: "Rich Bond, a former Republican Party chairman and deputy White House chief of staff for Mr. Bush’s father, said of the president, 'He’s in a greatly weakened state, and he’s playing the best hand he can.'”