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President: Setbacks won't derail agenda

WASHINGTON - President Bush, faced with a string of setbacks on Capitol Hill, shrugged off questions about his political clout and promised Tuesday to keep pushing the Republican-led Congress for a Social Security overhaul.

Looking ahead, the president also acknowledged he was thinking about a Supreme Court vacancy, widely expected this year. That was a departure from the White House's usual refusal to publicly discuss how Bush would approach filling a job that, while not now empty, has groups across the political spectrum already gearing up for battle.

He pledged to consult senators at "an appropriate time," and suggested a recent compromise ending a Senate showdown over judicial nominees wouldn't necessarily lead him to lean to a more centrist pick for the high court.

"I told the American people I would find people of a certain temperament that would serve on the bench, and I intend to do that," Bush said.

Answering questions for 51 minutes in Rose Garden, Bush said his policies in Iraq, Iran and North Korea were working. He denounced as "absurd" a report by Amnesty International that compared the U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Soviet-era gulag.

The president held firm to his domestic policy agenda even though Congress - including some Republicans - has balked at much of it. Bush is facing fights over his plan to partially privatize Social Security, his nomination of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador, a free-trade pact with Central America and his opposition to legislation to expand embryonic stem cell research.

Bush professed no worries that he has depleted most of the political capital he earned with his re-election victory.

"I've been around here long enough now to tell you, and tell the people listening, things just don't happen overnight. It takes a while," the president said. "And one thing is for certain, it takes a president willing to push people to do hard things."

[Last modified June 1, 2005, 00:39:12]