Washington — The bulletin reached President Bush toward the end of his news conference Thursday.

Peter Maer of CBS News Radio asked what seemed to be a straightforward question. “What's your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing ... ”

“Wait, what did you just say?” the shocked president interrupted. “You're predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?”

“A number of analysts are predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline,” Maer explained.

You could've knocked Bush over with a feather. “Oh, yeah?” he said. “That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.”

Uh-oh. The president, once known for his common-guy skills, sounded eerily like his old man, who in 1992 seemed amazed to discover that supermarkets had bar-code scanners. On Wednesday, the $4-a-gallon forecasts had been on the front page of the New York Times, and on NBC's “Today Show” and CBS's “Early Show.” In the days before that, the prediction — made by AAA, among others — was in the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, even the Kansas City Star. The White House press secretary took a question about $4 gas at her Wednesday press briefing. A poll last month found that nearly three-quarters of Americans expect $4 gas.

The president, however, had difficulty grasping the possibility, even after Maer told him. “You just said the price of gasoline may be up to $4 a gallon — or some expert told you that,” Bush repeated. “That creates a lot of uncertainty.”

Bush, too, faces a lot of uncertainty, and not of the petroleum-derived variety. In these waning months of the Bush presidency, Congress is increasingly ignoring his ultimatums. Reporters have left him for the campaign trail. And Bush at times seems to be lacking his killer instinct.

At Thursday's session, NBC's David Gregory invited him to criticize Democratic presidential candidates for not knowing much about the expected new Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. “I don't know much about Medvedev, either,” Bush replied.

Agence France-Presse's Olivier Knox asked Bush why he was going to the Olympics in China despite the country's human rights record. “I'm a sports fan,” the president reasoned.

And when Michael Abramowitz of The Post asked Bush about his reluctance to talk to hostile foreign leaders, Bush delivered a tirade about the Castro brothers — and then disclosed his intention to give Abramowitz a hug.

The commander in chief, detached and defanged, seemed less concerned with the power of the presidency than with the topics of his oratory. “I talked about a missile defense system,” he said. “I talk about religious freedom. ... I talk about Darfur and Iran and Burma. ... I talked about some of the (tax) breaks.” And how about his dispute with Democrats in Congress over immunity for phone companies that share records with the government? “I'm going to keep talking about the issue,” he vowed. “I will keep talking about the issue and talking about the issue.”

But is the country listening? The White House had limited attendance at the news conference to one reporter per news outlet, but there were two rows of empty seats in the back.

Just before he arrived, the network correspondents doing their stand-ups sounded skeptical about the potential for big news. “The president is using a press conference to once again lean on Congress to get legislation he wants passed,” announced CBS's Bill Plante. “Is this possible for a lame-duck president with low numbers?”

Bush got quickly to his familiar lines about the Democrats' weaknesses on terrorism: “We cannot protect our country from terrorist attack.” But when Fox News' Mike Emanuel tried to provoke Bush by asking if Democrats “are playing a high-stakes game” with the nation's security, Bush pulled back. “No, I don't think so,” he said. “I don't think they're that cynical or devious.”

Likewise, he delivered a not-quite-ultimatum to Turkey about its incursions into northern Iraq. “The Turks need to move quickly, achieve their objective and get out,” Bush said.

“How quickly, sir, do they need to move out?” asked Matt Spetalnick of Reuters.

“You know, as quickly as possible,” was Bush's line in the sand.

“Days or weeks?”

“Well, as possible.”

But then, why should Bush worry whether the Turks spend days or weeks in Iraq when he himself has only months left in Washington? Neither did he seem concerned by Gregory's accusation that he “badly misjudged” Russia's Vladimir Putin (“We've had some head butts, diplomatic head butts”) or the suggestion by Cox News' Ken Herman that he would take foreign money for his presidential library (“Yes, probably take some foreign money”). Even the lack of a replacement for his top homeland security adviser, who resigned more than three months ago, caused him no worry.

“We got a fine man named Joel Bagnal working that office right now,” Bush said. “He's a real good guy. ... He knows what he's doing.”

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