There George W. Bush stood last night, the vice president and speaker of the House behind him one more time, eyes smiling, lips hinting of a smirk, looking comfortable in his skin before a chamber where many don't like him, giving presumably the last really big speech of his career.

And trying to remain relevant.

When you're a lame duck overshadowed by the Obamas, Clintons and McCains ready to move in, you talk about things like "a robust growth package."

Along with that and other lines intended to make him sound relevant for the final year of his final term, what struck me last night was how similar Mr. Bush's State of the Union themes were to the markers he put down in his two inaugural addresses.

I went back and looked at those speeches last week. The big themes that jumped out from them still define how the president sees himself.

The first one is that of Bush the reformer. Now, you may say, all presidents hope to reform things. But more than most presidents, Mr. Bush has tried to hit home runs. Small-ball was never for the former baseball executive.

The reform impulse continued through last night's address. With even some Democrats applauding, he called on both parties to pass a stimulus package, to push schools to higher levels of achievement and to promote open markets.

During his first inaugural, he spoke of education and trade, too. At the same time, he pledged to overhaul Social Security and Medicare and to rewire how Washington works. "Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment," he declared on his first day as president. "It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos."

In the aftermath of 9/11 and Iraq, his second inaugural shifted the spotlight onto Bush the defender. He defined his mission this way on Jan. 20, 2005: "My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people from further attacks and emerging threats."

Last night, we saw more of that mission – or obsession, as it can seem.

"We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure and we will deliver justice to the enemies of America," he said. No retreat there.

The question is, has he reformed and defended?

The answer, unfortunately, is a maddening one. Some critics see him as busting up the historic Republican coalition, going to war in Iraq for oil or being an incompetent boob. And those are just three things I read about him last week.

You can't say that he doesn't deserve some of his critics' shots. Even in Texas, there's a sense that this presidency didn't turn out anywhere close to what Bush supporters had hoped.

Still, he begins his final year and likely will end it with no clear summary line, if you really dig into the details of his presidency. This administration will take decades to figure out. Like Harry Truman, Mr. Bush will go home a disliked political figure. And, like Mr. Truman, it will take a long time for anyone to do more than write him off as a loser of a president.

Make no mistake, though: People will look back at this administration. This one hasn't been a transitional tenure, like the ones led by Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Mr. Bush's father.

Even when he has failed, George W. Bush has changed the debate. He has made it impossible for politicians to ignore the state of Social Security's finances. He has elevated immigration to an issue that none of us can escape. And he has pushed domestic security into our national conversation.

Without question, his decisions about Iraq and the war on terror will shape America's next decade, at the very least.

Some of his calls in those areas have been horrendous, like not adequately preparing for Iraq after Saddam Hussein was deposed. But not all have been. We haven't been attacked in seven years, and the troop surge in Iraq ultimately may prove to be his salvation.

We just don't know yet.

What I'll never understand is why he and his people allowed him to go from uniter to divider. Democrats played a role in this, certainly, but Mr. Bush also went bare-knuckled against them in the 2002 congressional elections, after he had momentum in the war on terror and had succeeded with the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act.

Those are questions for another day, for history to evaluate. What we know today is George W. Bush won't go out irrelevantly.

William McKenzie is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is wmckenzie@dallasnews.com.