It seems to me, and this is just an observation, that there was an opportunity for someone to take some freedoms away as a reaction to WTC911. That Bush didn't, that Bush deliberately kept the country on a peacetime footing--in a situation wherein someone else might have declared martial law, suspended the Constitution, closed the borders, and who knows what--shows us that Bush is not an opportunist; rather, he is careful to avoid disrupting our system. Above all, he is not seeking more and more power for the Presidency.
Contrast that with the antics of Chavez in Vz.