GEORGE W. BUSH will never have to campaign for office again. That is rather a pity, as he has developed and matured as a campaigner during his years in office as US President. Last Friday, on his sixtieth birthday, he was holding a press conference in Chicago, the first of his campaign to save the mid-term congressional elections for the Republican Party.

The most amusing moment came on the unlikely subject of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. The President said that he did not know whether the number of these weapons had increased in recent years. The journalist who had asked the question commented: “Maybe you know but are not telling.” The President replied: “That’s an option . . . Maybe I don’t know but I don’t want to tell you I don’t know.” Such a light semantic play is a sign of the President’s relaxation after six years in office.

The traditional view of Washington insiders is that foreign policy never decides national elections. I am not sure why they think this. Plainly, the presidential elections of 1916 (First World War), 1932 (world slump), 1940 and 1944 (Second World War), 1952 (Korean War), 1960 (missile gap), 1968 and 1972 (Vietnam War), 1980 (Iran hostages) and 2004 (Iraq), were all strongly influenced by foreign policy; both world wars and Vietnam certainly impacted on the mid-term elections.

The Chicago press conference was intended, among other things, to give the local press an opportunity to raise local and domestic issues. That hardly happened at all. The journalists all asked questions about world issues. That was what interested them. The President talked with energy and force about his problems in world affairs. They were what interested him. No doubt these issues will interest the electorate in November.

In the press conference, I noted only two domestic issues — both of which turned out to be international. The first was the price of oil; that depends on the progress of the war in the Middle East and of US relations with Iran. The President knows this is an important popular issue. His policy is to diversify away from reliance on crude oil and to promote nuclear power. The one thing that would make the price of oil fall would be a reduction of tension between Washington and Tehran — which does not seem likely at present.

There was only one other local question, and that concerned Iraq. The President was asked what he would say to the parents of the three Illinois Guards units that have recently left for that country. He replied, with considerable dignity, that the Guards were “participating in a noble and important cause . . . If I didn’t think we could win, I wouldn’t be here”.

President Bush makes an impressive case for his policy of maintaining sufficient US forces until Iraq becomes “a free country that can govern itself and sustain itself”. Yet the war — which is becoming unpopular — will inevitably be a major issue in November.

There was a certain selectivity about the journalists’ concerns. There was little or no focus on Afghanistan, which probably worries British defence chiefs more than Iraq itself, and there was surprisingly little attention to the deteriorating situation in Gaza. Yet there was no doubt about the priorities of the journalists or those of the President. As he put it: “National security interests trump economic interests.”

There were passages in which the President made a traditional appeal to American idealism. I think that most Americans would respond favourably to his emphatic statement that “you win elections by believing something”. He is certainly a believer in spreading democracy. His model is the US governance of post-1945 Japan. Force may be unavoidable, but it should be followed by the development of a broader area of liberty and democracy. Mr Bush is in this sense a sincere neoconservative, though an increasingly cautious one. He used to be a Cheney-Rumsfeld type of neo-con; he now speaks with real warmth of Condoleezza Rice, who is Secretary of State. I think he trusts her the most.

There was one reply that seemed much less self-confident, and was therefore much less convincing than the rest of the press conference. That was the President’s answer to a question about the Supreme Court ruling on the military tribunal that was supposed to try the Guantánamo prisoners. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the military tribunal had no legal validity, because it did not constitute “due process of law”.

The President said that he would abide by the ruling, but he obviously wished that he did not have to do so. He would have liked to wriggle. He said he would work with Congress to create a new tribunal, but Congress will obviously be reluctant to give him what he wants. The President said that the Supreme Court had upheld Guantánamo, but then had to correct himself. He said that the court had been “silent” on Guantánamo; indeed the whole of Guantánamo is the antithesis of due process.

This is dangerous territory. In constitutional terms the President has powers that descend from the 18th-century English monarchs; he is the heir to George III. Even the English monarchs who tried to put themselves above the law were always in danger: Charles I was executed; James II was expelled. Some presidents have made claim to a similar imperial power, including Lincoln in the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt in the slump; Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court failed.

Another imperial president, Richard Nixon, was forced to resign by the threat of impeachment. President Bush, in prosecuting the War on Terror, has also been tempted to put himself about the restraints of national and international law, including the Fourteenth Amendment on “due process” and the Geneva Convention. Now the Supreme Court has refused to uphold him, though on a narrower point. He had better accept its ruling as gracefully as he can.