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From today's NYT's:

The cumulative effect of his difficulties in the last few months has been to pierce the sense of dominance that he sought to project after his re-election and to heighten concerns among Republicans in Congress that voters will hold them, as the party in power, responsible for failure to address the issues of most concern to the public.
"The political capital he thought he had has dwindled to very little, and he overstated how much he had to begin with," said Allan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University in Washington. . .

. . . Mr. Bush and his administration now find themselves with little or no support from Democrats and with a Republican Party that has proved reluctant to support him on a number of fronts.
"Their domestic agenda is really stalled, and they're pretty much looking for an exit ramp," said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. "They seem to have been unwilling to shift from the politics of a first-term president who has to run for re-election into the clear-eyed policy of a second-term president who wants to be able to point to substantive achievements." . . .

. . . "While it's been a rough 45 days, Bush can and will get back on track, and all those jitters will go away," said Scott W. Reed, a Republican consultant who managed Bob Dole's 1996 campaign for president.
But Mr. Lichtman said history suggested that it was difficult for second-term presidents to regain their clout in domestic policy once they had dissipated it."Second terms have never been redeemed by domestic policy," he said. "It's very difficult once you've had problems in domestic policy, as they almost all do, to come back. To the extent you've had them come out successfully, it's because of foreign affairs."