Following the 2004 election Bush declared he had political capital to spend.  He relentlessly chased around in Air Force One, trying to convince the public that private accounts would be the security to keep Social Security solvent.  

This proved to be a colossal flop, as repeatedly the public rejected this idea.  The public obviously put more faith in the government doling out Social Security checks than banks or Wall Street.

Following the 2006 election Bush had no political capital to spend at all.  With a tornado of books, Internet blogs, and film documentaries the Iraq War debacle expose had finally sunk in.

It took what a John Hopkins estimate revealed to be 655,000 Iraqi deaths, as well as 2,813 U.S. service personnel dead and 17,000 more injured, to wake America up.  Now Bush's public approval ratings had dipped to the low 30's.