"This is going to be great," General Myers told the president today. Another four-star general, Peter Pace of the Marines, who currently runs the Southern command covering Latin America and the Caribbean, will take General Myers's current post as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Neither is expected to encounter difficulties during confirmation hearings in the Senate.

For all his talk about upcoming budget battles, the escalation of violence in the Middle East, and his pending decision on whether to give some illegal aliens the right to work here, Mr. Bush appeared more relaxed today than at any news conference during his seven months in the presidency. Perhaps it was the informality of the atmosphere: A community hall that had clearly suffered some neglect over the years, tucked in the woods off a small road in this one-stoplight town. Perhaps it was the scant attendance: There were barely enough people to fill two rows of folding chairs.

So Mr. Bush bantered about dragging reporters into the 100-degree heat of his adopted Texas town, and insisted that even if politics are getting nasty again in Washington, "It's a great tone here in Crawford."

"You know what they're interested in?" he asked reporters, talking about his neighbors here. "Their families, whether it's going to rain, interested in the price of fuel, they're worried about insurance rates — they're not too bad in Texas."

"They're not worried about the partisan squabbling that has kind of sullied the Washington scene at times," Mr. Bush said.

In his comments today, and in asides to elementary school students and reporters here in Crawford on Thursday, Mr. Bush appeared to be laying out his strategy for the fall. At its simplest, it boils down to this: Mr. Bush will battle for increased spending on the military and education, and he will argue that every other proposal must be set aside to avoid dipping into the Social Security surplus.

Mr. Bush and his advisers, many of whom were in Texas today for a review of military transformation with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Myers, know full well that both Democrats and Republicans will object. The Democrats say there is nothing sacred about the military budget, and question many of Mr. Bush's increases there. The Republicans passed a budget resolution in the spring that includes a far more generous prescription drug benefit for senior citizens than Mr. Bush proposes.