President Bush does not admit mistakes very often, so it’s worth paying attention when he does. And as he leaves office, Bush has been emphasizing two critical missteps on the subject of immigration.

Mistake one, he told his final news conference, was not using the political capital he earned during the 2004 re-election campaign to push immediately for immigration reform. Instead, he focused on a futile effort to rework Social Society, and by the time he got to immigration in 2007, he had squandered his capital and lost his influence.

Mistake two was the cynical decision by conservative Republicans to oppose immigration reform as a way of energizing their base supporters. The result was to drive Hispanic voters straight into the waiting arms of the Democrats. As the president noted, “The outcome of ... the debate was that some people said, well, Republicans don’t like immigrants. Now that may be fair or unfair, but that’s ... the image that came out.”

Bush has long understood the rising importance of Hispanic voters and won 44 percent of them against John Kerry in 2004. But after the immigration debacle, John McCain – a strong sponsor of reform – slumped to 31 percent. Even more threatening to the GOP: McCain attracted only 19 percent of Hispanics under 30.