President Bush's decision to shore up the financial markets with massive government intervention is the latest sign of a broad ideological transformation of his presidency.

So the new question is has something also happend to his Doctrine? "We will fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them here"

Bush set out his doctrine and no one will quarrel about its success. The United States has avoided any further attack on its soil, as dictated by the second half of the doctrine. For how long, no one can be confident. Those who might wish to bring harm to the American people may well survey the economic damage that they have done to themselves and be content.

The first half of the doctrine has been an undoubted success. The bombs that ripped through London and Madrid are witness to that.

Now Islamabad has experienced its worse bombing yet. From being an emerging country, Pakistan is being increasingly regarded as a failed state, its government identified as too subservient to the United States.

After a first term in which he largely adhered to conservative — or neoconservative — principles, Bush has moved away from long-standing positions on a range of foreign and domestic issues. In the final year of his second term, he has reached out diplomatically to North Korea and Iran, engineered a dramatic midcourse correction on the Iraq war and increased the government's role in the daily workings of the economy to a degree that would have seemed unimaginable when he first pursued the nation's highest office.

Given that Bush toppled two foreign governments and slashed taxes dramatically in his first term, the policies of his second term are striking, particularly to those who had hoped his presidency might usher in enduring conservative rule in Washington. Some leading conservatives seemed stunned yesterday by the turn of events that has left the federal government in control of one of the world's biggest insurance companies and the two largest financiers of home mortgages.

The recent events both in the finance world and with Gorgia or events in Pakistan all point to a changing landscape and a willing President to consider change. Something that Democrats been basing their whole election campaign on.