By hiring Patrick Hynes as his blog outreach adviser, John McCain has become the latest politician to decide reaching out to political blogs will be important in the next presidential election. The 34-year-old Hynes, who runs a blog called anklebitingpundits.com, had already helped McCain with a posting on the site porkbusters that was well-received earlier this month, but said he reached a formal agreement to work on McCain's PAC Straight Talk America last week. Hynes, a political consultant who was once political director of the New Hampshire Republican Party and has worked on several successful congressional campaigns, said he planned to work on both blogs and social networking sites for the pac. But he found himself in a controversy this week, as some other bloggers questioned why Hynes had not disclosed his relationship with McCain earlier, particularly when he had criticized Massachusetts Governor and likely 2008 GOP contender Mitt Romney.

Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton are among the pols and potential presidential contenders who have hired blog outreach advisers. But those hirings were obvious; the liberal political blogs, particularly Daily Kos, have grown in power and influence in the Democratic Party. And for Clinton, at least attempting to appease some of the liberal bloggers, who hate her stance on the Iraq War, is very important. No conservative blog has yet grown to the power of Kos partly because, with Republicans in power, there's not as much need to use a blogs as a powerful organizing tool. So while Kossacks are is talking about hosting a presidential debate before 2008, no one is expecting InstaPundit, RedState or Hugh Hewitt, a conservative blogger and talk radio host, to have that kind of influence. On the hand, Hynes may have some work to do in terms of building up McCain's reputation on the right. Hewitt has already been critical of McCain and conservative bloggers, like their liberal counterparts, tend to be more ideological and partisan than traditional voters and may not like McCain's moderate record on some issues as they consider a potential Republican nominee.

McCain aides aren't exactly sure how this will play out either. Mike Dennehy, a McCain adviser, said of outreach to blogs, "I think it's going to be very important, but to be honest, it's still debatable how that importance develops." But Dennehy said he expected McCain would continue to look for conservative blogs to post to.

—Perry Bacon Jr.

An immigration bill had looked dead on Capitol Hill for the rest of this election year, but a conservative Senator and House member have teamed up to offer a plan with new wrinkles that are likely to reignite debate about legislation, leadership aides tell TIME.

Republicans are watching their support slide in polls of Hispanics, and some strategists have concluded that GOP lawmakers cannot afford to hit the campaign trail this fall without having passed an immigration bill when their party controls the House, Senate and White House. Such a piece of legislation would also hand President Bush his biggest domestic accomplishment since his reelection, in the process satisfying business interests who want legal access to cheaper labor from south of the border.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the chairman of the House's conservative caucus, plan to announce a plan Tuesday that fits the broad parameters of what Bush has proposed — border security plus a temporary worker program, without amnesty. But it includes several constraints aimed at appealing to the hard core of House Republicans who had been insisting on a security-only approach.

A novel element of the plan would encourage holders of the guest visas to return to their home countries by returning their Social Security contributions to them in a lump sum when they left. (Employer contributions would remain in the Social Security system.) Their Medicare contributions would go to a fund to reimburse hospitals for uncompensated emergency medical expenses, which are often cited by people arguing that illegal immigrants are burdening communities. Participants in the guest worker program would be granted what the authors call a "Good Neighbor SAFE Visa," with that acronym standing for "Secure Authorized Foreign Employee."

The first two years of the program would be dedicated to border security. Then, under a mechanism known as a trigger, the President could certify to Congress that the borders were secure and the temporary worker program would begin.

A House Republican leadership aide said members "are looking for a safe landing zone as far as a guest worker program that can't be defined as amnesty," and that the plan appeared to provide just that.

On the Senate side, a Republican leadership aide said that senators "are looking for an alternative" and that the Hutchison-Pence proposal "might be another way to keep the conversation on immigration moving forward." However, he said some senators were contemplating attaching a border-security measure to an appropriations bill, and said that might have a better chance of passing before the midterm elections in November.

The House passed a stringent border enforcement bill on Dec. 16 and the Senate passed a sweeping immigration reform on May 25. But the bills are from Mars and Venus, and many lawmakers have thought it would be impossible for a conference committee to work out their differences.

Hutchison and Pence tried to appeal to all the major factions by declaring in a joint comment accompanying their proposal: "Our plan puts border security first and cracks down on those who knowingly hire illegal workers, but it also recognizes the need for a temporary worker program that operates without amnesty and harnesses the power of the private sector to avoid creating a huge new government bureaucracy."

The new plan includes most of the major provisions of a plan that Pence, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, had proposed in May. That plan, which contemplates privately run worker placement agencies called "Ellis Island Centers," got a major pat on the back on Sunday from House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who said on "Fox News Sunday": "I'm prepared to bring some agreement if we can secure the border first." One change from the earlier Pence plan is that people would only be eligible if they were from countries that were parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central Americans Free Trade Agreement — Canada. Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

A major difference with Bush's original idea is that applicants would have to return to their home countries to apply for the visas. Critics of this idea say that many illegal immigrants would not take the risk of coming out of the shadows for such a measure. One sticking point between the House and Senate has been whether a guest worker program should provide a path to citizenship. The Hutchison-Pence plan would allow someone to remain permanently and legally after 17 years of steady employment and regular background checks.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a prime mover behind the Senate-passed bill, issued a statement saying that he was not satisfied with the new approach. "Unlike some in his party who would rather just play politics with immigration, Representative Pence has come to the table with substantive proposal," Kennedy said. "While I am encouraged by his willingness to compromise, I disagree with the plan. The only way we will secure our borders and break the cycle of illegality is to offer a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented who are here and a temporary worker program for the future." Neither that nor the security-only approach, however, appears to be a path to passage of a bill. So Hutchison and Pence are trying for what they call a third way.

President George W. Bush has always done the middle East his way.

When he became the first President to formally call for the creation of a Palestinian state, it was at least partly because he gagged on such conventional but tortured constructions as "a place for the Palestinian people to carry out their aspirations." When aides drafted a speech with such wording, the President challenged them, demanding, What does that mean? An aide explained that this was how the matter was generally formulated. Bush, a senior Administration official recalls, asked, "Well, do we think there's going to be a Palestinian state?" When his aides said yes, he continued, "Then why don't we say that there should be a Palestinian state?" With that, the groundbreaking words were delivered.

Bush's way is facing a stern test now that the crisis in Lebanon has dragged the Administration into the role of potential peacemaker. Before dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region, Bush initiated a series of phone calls from Air Force One and the Oval Office to leaders around the region. Making a virtue of necessity, the President's team says it sees the opportunity for a "leadership moment" —and, however counterintuitive, an unexpected new chance to make headway on Bush's grand goal of leaving the Middle East more democratic than he found it. Ahead of Rice, a State Department envoy and Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy, spent four days in the region.

By sending Rice to the region, the White House is gambling that Arab governments fear the Hizballah militants more than they resent the Israelis. This may help the Secretary of State create what she envisions as an "umbrella"—the word coalition having been spoiled by Iraq —of Arab allies willing to condemn terrorism. Some specialists call the goal naive, feeling that it overestimates the willingness of Israel's Arab neighbors to risk being seen as taking Israel's side and that it discounts the fact that even if the U.S. could get these governments on board, their people would be unlikely to follow.

Yet Bush would dearly love to accomplish something, to neutralize anti-American forces in the Middle East and to redeem himself as a peacemaker. Without that, his foreign policy legacy lives and dies with Iraq, and it's looking ever more likely that the country won't be peaceful before he leaves office. Still, the Administration is ever optimistic. In an e-mail titled "Setting the Record Straight" late last week, the White House declared, "The President's foreign policy is succeeding."

Indeed, the West Wing is relatively upbeat after its annus horribilis. People close to Bush say chief of staff Josh Bolten and press secretary Tony Snow have given the place a desperately needed karmic injection. Bolten has pleased the President by giving him straight talk instead of cheerleading and has imposed a new accountability on the staff. Snow —with his bankerly suits, full tank of confidence and dash of celebrity —went on the breakfast shows last week to defend the pace and results of Bush's diplomacy, scoffing at the impatience of those who demanded "egg-timer diplomacy."

As for Bush himself, he is curtailing his traditional August working vacation at the ranch so that he can barnstorm before the midterm elections. Their outlook thus far seems so ominous for the G.O.P. that one presidential adviser wants Bush to beef up his counsel's office for the tangle of investigations that a Democrat-controlled House might pursue.

With the Democrats determined to make a major issue of Bush's foreign policy competence, the President seems ready to leap at the chance to refresh the landscape and make his own history. He had deliberately diverged from the Middle East course set by his two predecessors when he hired an unabashedly pro-Israel staff. "I'm all for conferences," Bush said in a 2004 appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "just so long as the conferences produce something." George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker were seen as heroes by some Palestinians; Bill Clinton made the quest for Middle East peace a centerpiece of his legacy project. Bush aides say the times were different then and the vaunted progress under Clinton turned out to be what one called "a false stability."

Does George W. Bush have dreams of presiding over a grand Middle East peace deal at Camp David or some other photogenic spot, like the Red Sea summit of his first term? Aides say he is content for now to take steps toward transforming the region in less obvious but, they believe, more fundamental and lasting ways. So Bush today is in the precarious position of putting his hopes in a region that has yielded only heartbreak.

—With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Cairo