Terror surveillance: Seeing civil-liberty abuses where there were none, Democrats sought restrictions on a program to intercept communications between terrorists abroad that are routed through the United States. Administration pressure forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi this summer to allow a temporary extension while a compromise could be worked out.

Then there was the Democrats' push to enact an expanded Children's Health Insurance Program, originally targeting lower-income families, which would have made the benefits plan available to upper-income people. The administration pushed back, saying the program should remain focused on the poor and that the bill was a thinly disguised attempt to nationalize health care.

After Bush vetoed their bill, Democrats mounted an override campaign with TV ads, rallies and phone banks that targeted 15 House Republicans in swing districts to force them to change their vote. They didn't, and Bush won that round, too.

The president finished the year by slugging it out with Democrats on the budget. They wanted to boost spending by nearly $25 billion, but the final bill held spending to a smaller increase, and included war funding to boot.

It was a remarkable record of achievement by a president who was all but written off by the pundits as an irrelevant chief executive in the twilight of his last term. But Bush reinvented himself as a veto-happy gunslinger who was not going to be pushed around by Congress -- mounting a nonstop counteroffensive that kept the Democrats in retreat.

By year's end, even his reduced GOP forces in Congress -- who stuck with him through thick and thin -- were surprised by their success.

"A year into 'the wilderness,' our Republican team has scored legislative and political victories that no one -- no one -- could have predicted a year ago," House Republican leader John Boehner said in a memorandum to his GOP troops.

This come-from-behind performance reminiscent of a Rocky movie must have many Democrats thinking, "These guys are going to be harder to beat in 2008 than we thought."