Washington ? In a famous exchange during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Winston Churchill why he was foisting a visit by Charles De Gaulle on the U.S. president. Churchill replied that he had “borne the Cross of Lorraine long enough.”

Watching President Bush’s even-tempered news conference after the Republican debacle in the midterm elections, I got the feeling that maybe Bush had suffered his allies too long and, at some level, he was not sorry to be rid of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Bush was more composed and less strident than in recent news conferences. The man was going with the flow.

By nature, Bush is probably incapable of seeing himself as the instrument of the Republican defeat. But, in a small way, he is the beneficiary. He is relieved of the burden of an old agenda.

Without a majority on Capitol Hill, Bush can press ahead with a guest-worker program and reverse himself in areas where he had had to stand firm. In one week, Bush went from supporting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a darling of the Republican right in the House, to sacking him.

Now, the president may feel that he has more latitude for a real change in Iraq. He can, if he so chooses, begin to remove troops from Iraq, to the approbation of the new House and most of the Senate. All he needs is a little push from the Baker-Hamilton Commission, and Bush can revise his broader Middle East policy without a chorus of contempt.

Those worthies of the right who, in the past, have sought to check Bush by threatening electoral defeat through their point-man in the White House, Karl Rove, are silenced. No more does it matter whether the Reverends Dobson, Falwell and Robertson disapprove. The public has voted them out, just as surely as it voted out the Republican House.

For the first time in his presidency, Bush is a free man – free to wheel and deal, and even to redeem his legacy.

Classically, he is a lame-duck. But peculiarly, he is in a position to fly.

And Bush likes to fly. He enjoys the auteur presidency. Most political leaders learn that it is easier to deal with the opposition than it is with those who believe that they, and they alone, are responsible for your ascent to power, and must therefore be indulged throughout your tenure.

Easier, by far, to trade with your opposition, woo them, cajole them and, if all else fails, blame them. Bill Clinton liked joisting with Newt Gingrich. Churchill revered the benches in front of him in the House of Commons, telling a young Conservative member, who described them as the enemy, that they were the loyal opposition. The enemy, he remarked wryly, is behind us.

Churchill, alas, never had the opportunity afforded by the presidential system of holding his opponents close. Bush can cultivate Nancy Pelosi with humor and charm – the way he ingratiated himself with the owners of major league baseball.

The president can now look forward to promoting his own agenda, not the agenda of his political bankers. But in order to continue to move forward, Bush needs to continue to clean house.

It is time for Karl Rove to leave the White House, to abandon his role as the conduit of the political views that have been rejected by the electorate. If that job is to be filled at all (and there is some question whether it is in any way correct to have a political operative embedded in the White House staff), it should be filled by someone who can work with the Democrats. Someone who can take calls from the left as well as the right, and who is not beholden to a failed strategy.

Ask yourself why the president was smiling at his press conference.