Despite dismal national and international poll ratings, a hostile Congress and a sagging economy, President Bush enters his last year in office expressing total confidence that he’s been doing the right things.

He told me in an Oval Office interview that “absolutely, we are stronger” as a nation than when he took office and that, even in areas where he failed to get what he wanted -- as in Social Security and immigration reform -- his ideas eventually will prevail.

He said his biggest disappointment as president was his inability to be a “uniter not a divider,” and he agreed that politics is “polarized.” On the other hand, he was adamant that he would never compromise on some of the principles -- such as cutting taxes and aggressively promoting democracy -- that have made him so polarizing.

“There are certain things on which I will not compromise. I don’t see how you can be president if you don’t stand strong on your principles. There’s too much incoming.

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“There’s too many complicated decisions, too much flattery, too much criticism, too many polls, too many focus groups. And the president has to say: ‘Here is the ground on which I stand.’ ”

The bottom line on Bush is that he seems utterly convinced in the rightness of what he’s been doing these seven years. “We must be confident in what we stand for and not feel like we have to subsume our interests, our beliefs, in order to reach a kind of unanimity in the world,” he said.

“And that also applies at home. So, people say, ‘You can unify.’ But I will not unify if I have to compromise my beliefs.”

It can’t be much more stark and clear than that. The Great Polarizer will not compromise -- and he won’t unify, either, unless, like Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan and his hero, Abraham Lincoln, he’s vindicated by history.

Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.