"GOOD, STRONG RECORD"

On Katrina, the president appeared to be both regretful and defiant.

The Bush administration's response to the hurricane disaster was widely criticized.

"Don't tell me the federal response was slow when 30,000 people were pulled off roofs when the storm passed Could things have been done better? Absolutely," Bush said.

The president also defended his widely-criticized decision not to visit Louisiana after Katrina hit that region.

Bush said that if he "landed Air Force One in New Orleans or Baton Rouge" shortly after the hurricane, "law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission."

The president only brushed a little on recent events during the50-minute session.

On the issue of whether to request the second 350-billion-U.S.-dollar part of October's financial-bailout package, he said it is up to President-elect Barack Obama.

"I don't intend to make the request," Bush said, "unless he specifically asks me to make it."

About an hour after the news conference, Obama asked Bush to make the request, and the White House said that the president would do so.

Bush touched upon the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

"I'm for a sustainable cease-fire," he said, "and a definition of a sustainable cease-fire is that Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel."

"And there will not be a sustainable cease-fire if they continue firing rockets. I happen to believe the choice is Hamas' to make."

Overall, Bush insisted that he has "good, strong record" during the 8-year tenure.

"You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy," he said. "That's just not my nature."

At one point, responding to a question about why he had evoked such passionate criticism in some circles, Bush likened himself to Abraham Lincoln.

"I've been reading, you know, a lot about Abraham Lincoln during my presidency and there's some pretty harsh discord when it came to the 16th president, just like there's been harsh discord for the 43rd president," he said.