President Bush, who kept a public silence on the race to succeed him in the closing days of the campaign, called Barack Obama seven minutes after the Associated Press projected that the Democratic senator would win the presidency.
The president called John McCain 26 minutes later, after McCain conceded defeat.
In a brief e-mailed statement, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Bush spoke with Obama at 11:12 p.m. EST.
According to Perino's message, Bush said:
Mr. President-elect, congratulations to you. What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters. Laura and I called to congratulate you and your good bride.
I promise to make this a smooth transition. You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations and go enjoy yourself.
She said Bush invited Obama and his family "to visit the White House soon, at their convenience."
Perino said Bush told McCain:
John, you gave it your all. I'm proud of you, and I'm sorry it didn't work out. You didn't leave anything on the playing field.
Your statement was fabulous and very classy. Please give our love to Cindy.
Both calls were made from the Treaty Room, the president's office in the White House residence, Perino said.
She said Bush would speak in the Rose Garden at 7:40 a.m. PST on Wednesday.
Chuck Todd, at the white electronic board on MSNBC's campaign set, recalled NBC's beloved and much-missed colleague Tim Russert, the host of "Meet the Press" who died earlier this year.
Todd said he had been musing about Russert's prescient calls on election nights past — Tim's prediction in 2000 that the election would come down to "Florida, Florida, Florida" and his call in 2004 that the presidential race would be decided in "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio."
Russert's whiteboard has long been replaced by fancy high-tech gear. But Todd, saying he had tried to think of what the respected NBC newsman would do at the board in 2008, said he didn't think Russert would write down a state's name.
Instead, said Todd, he would write ...
"Bush, Bush, Bush."
His explanation: The size of the Republican losses — Liddy Dole loses her race decisively in North Carolina, Jeanne Shaheen defeats Republican moderate John Sununu handily, Barack Obama bests John McCain in a landslide — just doesn't happen if President Bush had been more popular.
There is likely to be much second-guessing in the morning, a whole TV cast of pundits to weigh the factors that led to the 2008 dramatic victory for Democrats. Some will say that Obama, with his massive get-out-the-vote effort and his prowess at harnessing a youth-powered social network, won the election. Others will say that it was more that McCain lost the election with his lurching from issue to issue, and with his pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
But Todd is not likely to be alone in judging that Bush, whose popularity rating according to CBS News is at an all-time presidential low of 20%, hurt the Republican brand.
When the sun comes up on the White House Wednesday morning, tourists will gawk through the gate and a new administration will be planning its transition to power.
But Tuesday night, President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush spent their last election night in the White House. It was billed as a quiet evening, with some friends and staffers invited to dinner to watch the election returns and celebrate Mrs. Bush's birthday.
At the start of the dinner, said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, the president gave a toast. He thanked those present for all they had done during his eight years in office, and for their friendship. Then he said, "And may God bless whoever wins tonight."
Bush appreciates today's vivid demonstration of "the strength of our country and democracy," Perino said, and he is committed to a transition "that is as smooth as possible."
Later, after it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be the 44th president of the United States, Bush called the Illinois senator. offered his congratulations and invited the Obama family to the White House.
For her birthday I'd like to send her something new, fresh, youthful and energetic: A president named Barack Obama. Laura Bush has a lot of class, and I'm sure she will appreciate it.
No word yet on what President Bush is getting the first lady for her last birthday in the White House. (Actually we got word late at night that he gave her a pair of what press secretary Dana Perino described as "a pair of beautiful earrings.") But Mrs. Bush herself hinted that she was looking forward to a new president, or at least to the end of the presidential campaign. In a speech the other day, she made reference to all the times during the campaign that Obama tried to tie John McCain to the Bush White House. At a Kentucky campaign stop, she said:
I'm really looking forward to election day, partly because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire year.
Press secretary Sally McDonough says that the president and Mrs. Bush have invited friends and senior staff to join them for dinner on election night. And, in celebration of her birthday, they'll have coconut birthday cake for dessert.
With less than three months left in the Bush administration, the battle over protecting two vast areas of the Pacific Ocean from fishing and mineral exploitation is raging as if the president's legacy depended on it.
Which, actually, it does.
On one side is first lady Laura Bush, who according to the Washington Post has asked for two briefings on the issue from the White House staff, and has asked her aides to confer with scientists on how to preserve diverse ecosystems.
On the other side is Vice President Dick Cheney, who along with some officials in the Northern Mariana Islands argues that banning fishing and mineral exploration will hurt the region's economy.
"It's hard, but it should be," said James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "These are big, consequential, national decisions that have international ramifications."
In August, President Bush told several federal agencies to begin working on a plan so that he could create two "marine conservation management areas" in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth between Japan and Guam. That move -- if it happens -- would greatly expand Bush's environmental legacy, adding vast territory to the 140,000 miles he designated for protection in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2006.
It would also protect blue sharks like the one above from shark finning, the practice of removing the dorsal fin from sharks for such Asian delicacies as shark fin soup. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, hundreds of thousands of finned sharks are incidentally caught by fishermen chasing swordfish and tuna in the waters off Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: National Marine Fisheries Service / Associated Press
George W. Bush likes to say that you can't read too much into public opinion polls. And who can blame him. He was elected president not once but twice.
Still, today's new numbers -- in a poll conducted from Friday through Sunday -- must come as a blow. His numbers are at the low end of the graph above, which is pollster.com's average of all the major polls.
As Americans are turning out to the polls in record numbers, Bush's approval rating, according to the latest CBS News tracking poll, has dipped to 20%, the lowest ever recorded for a president. His disapproval rating of 72% matches his all-time high, reached last month.
The same poll, taken on the eve of a historic election, found that Republican John McCain had gained some ground on Democrat Barack Obama but that Obama maintains a comfortable, 51%-42% spread over McCain among likely voters, with 5% undecided and a plus-or-minus error rate of 3%.
There were no lines. No finicky touch screens. There was no voting booth.
Just a cleared desk on Oct. 24 as President Bush filled out his ballot in the Oval Office and dispatched it to Texas. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said he did, indeed, vote for Republican John McCain.
It was symbolic of a quiet election season for a president who grew up in a political family, the grandson of a senator, the son of a member of Congress and president and, on his mother's side, the descendant of a president, Franklin Pierce.
Since endorsing McCain eight months ago, Bush has been seen with him only once -- and that was in passing at an airport in Arizona in late May. He spent the weekend before the election at Camp David, Md. His White House schedule Monday and today was clear of any public events.
His presence on the campaign trail was not welcome.
In his triumphant, hour-long acceptance speech from Denver in late August (the one with the fake Greek columns), Democrat Barack Obama mentioned his opponent John McCain 22 times. George W. Bush only got eight mentions.
But ever since the economic meltdown that sent Wall Street cratering and Main Street shivering, Bush has become the target of Obama's oratory, his economic policies the bogeyman for what polls suggest could be a historic landslide.
As the clock ticks down on the longest-running, most expensive and potentially most groundbreaking election in U.S. history, the senator from Illinois is wowing crowds with a stump speech that ties McCain ever tighter to the unpopular incumbent in the White House.
At his first rally in Jacksonville, Fla., this morning, Obama said:
The last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess.
Obama said McCain "has stood with this president every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed. Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debate. Calling for less regulation 21 times just this year." After 21 months of campaigning and three debates, Obama said, "Sen. McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he'd do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy."
He added, "George Bush dug us into a ditch. Now he's trying to give the shovel to John McCain."
For his part, McCain tells voters at almost every stop that he both he and Obama "have differences with how President Bush has handled the economy." Then he pivots, arguing that Obama "thinks taxes are too low, and I think spending is too high." Then he reprises a line from their last debate, saying:
Sen. Obama; I'm not President Bush...if you wanted to run against President Bush you should have ran four years ago.
The White House has noticed that both campaigns seem fixated on the president. First Lady Laura Bush, campaigning today in Shepherdsville, Ky., put it this way:
After months of primary elections, campaign ads and debates, tomorrow is finally Election Day. I'm really looking forward to Election Day, partly because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire year.
Somehow, however, the paper managed the produce its endorsement editorial without reference to Cheney or President Bush--while making abundantly clear that conditions in the country after eight years of their leadership demanded a change.
The newspaper's editorial board wrote:
The next occupant of the White House will inherit a national economy that's collapsing and two wars our nation has been fighting for years, depleting valuable resources we need to fix a multitude of domestic problems. Far too many of our nation's citizens live paycheck to paycheck, worried about whether they'll have a job next week or if a medical crisis will bankrupt them.
By a count assembled by Editor & Publisher, that makes the pro-Obama editorial tally over McCain 250 to 110.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Ben Woloszyn / Laramie Daily Boomerang, via Associated Press
With an open that notes Obama's recent endorsements from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and fabled investor Warren Buffet, the ad then cuts to Cheney at a campaign event Saturday in Wyoming, his home state, one of the dwindling number in the safely Republican column. In the footage, Cheney says:
I'm delighted to support John McCain. I'm pleased that he's chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president Sarah Palin.
It's kind of unusual for a presidential campaign to target the other side for having the support of its team. But Cheney and President Bush both are down in public opinion polls so the Obama campaign elected to use the footage to underscore its theme that McCain's policies would result in a third Bush term.
Noting McCain's support for the White House "90% of the time," the ad concludes, "That's not the change we need."
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
In his triumphant, hour-long acceptance speech from Denver in late August (the one with the fake Greek columns), Democrat 
