Just so. Politics is the art of the possible, and I'd rather have Bush accomplishing as many important conservative goals as he realistically can than shooting off his mouth and getting nothing done, in the style of Pat Buchanan and Harry Browne. I also agree that probably his mistakes in the Middle East are self-correcting. But they have been extremely damaging, and have undone much of the good work of Afghanistan--that is, the lesson that our enemies will be swiftly punished, and that they will not achieve their goals through terrorism.
Bush shares with Reagan a valuable political gift: he is firm but he is soft-spoken. He is not loud-mouthed and abrasive like some conservative politicians, who could not possibly win national election simply because of the way they present themselves.
However, Bush has positioned his party as pro-choice where it will matter most to most Americans in coming years -- regarding education (freedom to choose among public and private schools)... I feel fairly good about Bush, but the above is simply not the case as I understand it. I thought that in his last education bill he abandoned vouchers when it became politically inconvenient.
Bush is not a revolutonary. He will not change the system, he will simply run it as well as he can, more or less from the right.