It might seem like the new George W. Bush — or maybe the old one, returning to his Texas governor roots. But, Republicans say, it is really just the same President Bush — the first M.B.A. president, pragmatic enough to recognize, as he himself might say, that he must adjust his tactics to changing conditions on the ground.

"You're seeing the George Bush who has always been adept at playing the hand he is dealt," said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House.

Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman and lobbyist, put it this way: "I've never thought that George Bush was a rigid ideologue; I've never thought that he was a hardened partisan. He is a businessman first, and in business you don't spend a lot of time crying about changed circumstances. You figure out quickly how to adapt, and that's what he's doing."

But Bush demonstrated Thursday that he is not going overboard to adapt.

With his Cabinet arrayed behind him, he greeted reporters in the Rose Garden to say that, before Republicans ceded control of Congress at the end of the year, he wanted them to pass legislation codifying his authority to run a once-secret domestic wiretapping program — anathema to many Democrats.

Bush is also pressing the lame-duck Senate to confirm John R. Bolton, whom he installed as ambassador to the United Nations during a recess, circumventing Democrats who oppose Bolton.

Snow, the press secretary, was told that did not exactly sound like an olive branch, and he replied, "Let me put it this way, olive branches work in two directions."

Neo-conservatives, though chastened by Tuesday's results, said they did not expect radical change, despite Bush's announcement that he would nominate Robert M. Gates, a former C.I.A. director, to succeed Rumsfeld.

"I don't think Gates means the president is looking for a way out of Iraq," said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. "Gates means he knew he had to make a change and get a fresh face in to build public support. So long as Bush is president, he's not going to want to withdraw from Iraq, and he's not going to want to go back to a pre-9/11 foreign policy, and that's really the core of it."

Democrats, not surprisingly, were a tad suspicious. Tom Daschle, who served as Democratic leader of the Senate during the brief period when Democrats were in the majority under Bush, said he saw little evidence that the White House could depart from its "arrogance and extraordinary single-mindedness."

Daschle invoked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, who famously repaired his relationship with Democrats. "But I don't think he's motivated in the same way," Daschle said of Bush. "Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to get re-elected. There's no real motivation for Bush."

But there is motivation for Democrats — and Bush intends to exploit that if he can.

"Their whole theme has been the do-nothing Congress," Black, the Republican strategist, said. "Now, if they get in there and make themselves vulnerable to that charge, it hurts them in '08. He knows that they have an incentive to get things done, and he's going to take advantage of that."

If it works — and that is a big if — some Republicans say it could be an opportunity for Bush to refurbish his presidency. It is an old saw of politics that you never win by losing, but Tuesday's drubbing leaves Bush a liberated man, free to cooperate with Democrats without worrying about his base or the next election.