The day after President Bush won re-election, Vice President Cheney told cheering supporters their team would have a “consequential presidency.” That little phrase tells you all you need to know about Bush’s second term. He’s off to a rocky start, but he’s not going to run for cover.

Take Social Security. After making his plan for private accounts his top priority and getting nowhere fast, Bush spent the past 60 days on a barnstorming tour. Result: support is falling, and his plan is now favored by only one in three Americans.

More cautious pols than Bush, worried about their legacy and early lame-duckitis, would cut their losses. Some would grab a compromise involving higher taxes and declare victory. Others would move on to another topic.

Not Bush.

He’s determined to keep touching the third rail of politics until it kills him, or submits.

So he called a prime-time news conference last week and recast his plan as an effort to help the poor.

He made it clear he still wants his private accounts, even if it means that people earning as little as $25,000 a year will eventually get smaller annual benefit increases when they retire.

He was even willing to throw Democrats a bone on another topic. He said he didn’t agree with some right-wingers in his own party that opposition to his judicial picks meant Dems were hostile to “people of faith.”

Will his gamble work?

The odds are still big against him.

First, Dems now have the president’s own words to argue he wants to “cut” Social Security. While that distorts truth — trimming the rate of future growth for those nowhere near retiring is not a “cut” in plain English — Dems will use it anyway to scare potential Bush backers.

Second, those most likely to benefit from private accounts — young people — are not yet interested enough to sway the outcome.

Finally, GOP members of Congress up for re-election next year will run away from the issue if it’s a loser.

And so far it is.

None of that will change Bush’s mind. He loves a fight, especially when he’s about to be declared dead.

Remember that for much of last year, Iraq and the sluggish economy made it look like he would follow Daddy into one-term history.

But he rallied himself and correctly framed the election as a contest over competing visions of national security. If he hadn’t, Teresa Heinz Kerry would have been first lady.

And wouldn’t that have been fun?