In defending his rejected immigration reform, President Bush clearly sees himself as in the vanguard of decency, and admonishes his party against being perceived as anti-immigrant.

But is this president oblivious to what is happening in his country because of his and his father's failure to secure the border? Even in rich, liberal Montgomery County, Md., one reads over the weekend that there is a hardening of attitudes toward illegal immigration after a spate of crimes and killings. Working-class Americans pay the price of the idealism around the dinner table at the Crawford ranch.

In his first five years, Bush himself has admitted, 6 million aliens were arrested at the border, breaking into this country. One in 12 -- 500,000 -- had criminal records. Is it anti-immigrant to demand a halt to this invasion, even if it means troops on the border? Is it truly compassionate, or an act of cravenness, to insist that the answer is amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegals and absolution for the businesses that hired them?

Choleric and cocky Harry Truman may be Bush's role model. But it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who had to clean up the mess Harry left behind.

Six months into office, Ike had ended the Korean War. He had the courage no president has since shown to tell the Israelis they must get off occupied land. They did.

While surely repelled by Nikita Khrushchev, especially for the Hungarian bloodbath of 1956, Ike had him up to Camp David in 1959 because, wicked as the Bolsheviks were, they had nuclear weapons, and one must talk to them.

Prudence is the mark of the true conservative. Ike and Ronald Reagan had it. Neither Bush nor Truman did. And that is why the former left the country so much better off than did the latter.

Goodbye, Mr. President, and God bless.