President Bush signaled just the right level of confidence in himself and his team yesterday in replacing his White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, with a veteran administration loyalist, budget director Joshua Bolten. By sticking with an insider, he signaled he isn’t panicking or changing the direction in what, after all, has been a historically successful presidency marked by an economic boom in America and an expansion of freedom and democracy abroad.

For one thing, the Bush poll numbers aren’t as bad as the doomsayers will have you believe. Rasmussen’s daily tracking survey, based on a three-day rolling average, has Mr. Bush’s overall job approval rating at 45%. That’s not a majority, but it’s an uptick from the mid-30s or high-30s numbers that had the Beltway pundits urging Mr. Bush to throw overboard the duly elected vice president.

For Mr. Bush, nothing succeeds like success. Headlines from the Moussaoui trial remind Americans that we are under attack by an enemy that wants to fly civilian airliners into the White House. Mr. Bush’s immigration reform made it through a key Senate Committee. If anything, what caused Mr. Bush’s poll numbers to dip were departures from his principles, mistakes such as letting Europe lead in Iran or taking an Al Gore approach to energy. Mr. Bush doesn’t have to remake his administration, just keep doing the job that in 2004 won him the most votes in American history.