No matter how bad things are for George W. Bush, at least he knows it is almost over. His State of the Union Address on Tuesday night begins his slide toward the final one thousand days until he can start clearing brush for good back at the ranch in Texas.

It is not like he plans to coast his way into retirement, however. Bush is showing remarkable skill at rocking and rolling all the way to January 2009, when he turns over the keys to Air Force One. He is doing it by keeping himself at the center of controversy.

Thanks to the seemingly endless argument about everything the president says or does — much of it stoked by his own people — he is still making news. No lame duck here, when it comes to grabbing headlines.

That is why this administration wears the target so proudly, fueling critics at every turn with combative defenses, stubborn denials and personal counterattacks serving a most useful purpose: Every day we argue about President Bush is another day when we don’t stop talking about him. For the day we no longer talk about him is the day he becomes a lame duck.

Even something as minor as releasing routine photographs with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff becomes an opportunity for this White House to take an extreme stand by refusing to release the pictures — causing a ruckus easily avoided by sharing the photos while characterizing them as nothing out of the ordinary.

Bush has always been one to stand his ground rather than seek common ground, but now his combative and partisan nature functions as a guard against irrelevance in the waning years of his presidency. He is well suited to a political world that values pride over compromise. And his opponents are quite happy to take the bait every time he lays it out, guaranteeing him the center of attention.

The State of the Union spectacle offers the president a prime-time opportunity to hold our attention by injecting more octane into disputes over the way he has handled everything from Iraq to tax cuts, drawing a line in the sand with Democrats by implicitly portraying them as tax-hiking wimps who would cripple entrepreneurs and abet terrorists. These addresses are usually less partisan than when Bush goes on the stump away from the capital — allowing him to portray himself as the only reliable protector of our wallets and our lives, with the more intensely partisan messages to be delivered in the days after his speech.

That approach gives Republicans a fitting template to defend the Democratic challenge to their control of Congress in November, and it would keep Bush at the helm and in the news.

There are plenty of tools at Bush’s disposal to ensure that we don’t stop talking about him for a long time. The domestic spying debate is a prime example. Why else would the president and his team work so hard to provoke a near-riot over his order to allow warrantless searches of Americans with international contacts? The argument helps Bush portray himself as the only guard against Democrats who would weaken our defenses.

This was a story that could have gone away soon after The New York Times outed the National Security Agency’s program. Bush could have stayed above the fray, and let his team assure everyone that it was a one-time event in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, limited in its scope and now under review. There would have been plenty of griping from civil libertarians, but a passive White House response would have robbed the debate of any lasting punch —and the spying could have continued unfettered.

Instead, Bush upped the ante, personally acknowledging his order and vigorously defending it, kick-starting a leak investigation and dispatching a team of counterattackers led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. It’s not as if he faces anyone who could or would stop the surveillance. Congress shows no signs of taking substantial steps against it, and any lawsuits that emerge probably won’t be resolved until after Bush leaves office. Further ensuring a center-stage position for this debate, last week Bush used a news conference and other public settings to cast the spying program in huge constitutional terms, asserting the broadest possible interpretation of his presidential powers and forcing even some Republicans in Congress to wonder if he aims to subvert their authority.

There is nothing like a potentially impeachable offense to make sure the White House is the center of all things Washington. Just ask Bill Clinton. Impeachment and a Senate trial certainly kept him from becoming irrelevant as a newsmaker in his final days.

Of course, the White House is not inviting impeachment. So long as the president’s party controls Congress that is a laughable notion. But it could become a serious notion if Democrats win power in November. Then Bush might make more news than he bargained for.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.