CRAWFORD, Texas - After 26 days away from the White House, President Bush returns today to the nation's capital facing an intense period of political maneuvering and policy debate that is likely to shape the second half of his term.

Since leaving Washington on Aug. 6, Bush has helped collect $8.75 million for Republican candidates nationwide. Including the contributions from events he attended just before his vacation, the total topped $10 million for August and $100 million for the year, surpassing the pace of the previous fund-raiser-in-chief, Bill Clinton.

Now that he has raised the money, Bush's task is to get out enough support to retain the party's majority in the House, where it has a six-vote edge, and regain control of the Senate, where the Democrats have a one-seat margin.

He is taking on this mission against a background of stratospheric support among Republicans - a better than 90 percent approval rating, polls show - but steadily falling numbers among independents and Democrats.

With candidates in the closest races needing cross-party support, Charles Cook, whose Cook Report newsletter tracks congressional races, said it adds up to this: "He's an asset for Republicans only in his ability to raise money. His ability to run interference for Republican candidates is minimal."

President's schedule

Nevertheless, much of the president's schedule for the next two months is being prepared with elections in mind - those not only in November, but also two years away, when, presumably, he will be seeking a second term. He already has made 16 visits this year to four states - Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico - in which fewer than 6,000 votes decided the outcome in the 2000 election.

According to a senior White House official, the thread that will run through Bush's message on these trips will be the three "securities" that are the underpinning of his presidency: national homeland and economic.

As polls show where Bush can most help GOP candidates, the schedule will be adjusted to create a "very tactical" itinerary, as one aide put it. The next eight days, for example, will see Bush traveling to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota and Michigan.

"A lot of this has to do with his own election in 2004," said Stephen Hess, a scholar of the presidency at the Brookings Institution, a centrist public policy organization in Washington. "A lot of places he's going into are places he has to win, or won very closely in 2000." Bush will return to Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, visiting the site where United Flight 93 crashed, and then spend three days in New York.