HE said he would do things – and he did them.

He said he would protect the American people by fighting a War on Terror – and he has. He said he would hold al Qaeda and its host regime in Afghanistan responsible for their crimes and that he would roust them from their safe haven – and he did it.

He said he would never forget the lessons of 9/11 – and he hasn’t.

He said he would lead a coalition of nations to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and he did it. He said he would work to turn the tyrannies of Iraq and Afghanistan toward democracy, and he has – the glorious election in the latter will soon be followed by a spirited contest in the former.

He said he would cut taxes and he did it. He said he would cut them again and he did it. He said he would pass an education-reform bill and he did it. He said he would increase military pay and veterans benefits and he did it. He said he would fight AIDS with an unprecedented $15 billion program and he’s doing it.

He said he would not force Israel to conform to American timetables for peace, and he kept to his word. He said he would side with all nations that fought terror, and he meant it because he stood with and by Israel when nobody else in the world would.

He said he would do what he could to respect unborn life, and he did – by signing the act banning the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion.

The key to understanding his victory is that he is a man of action. After a 2000 election in which he did not win a mandate, he chose to govern by seeking to institute the agenda he ran on. This was a bold stroke. He might have been careful, cautious, a tip-toer, trying not to offend too many people.

Instead, he governed. He took the view that a president can either lead or follow. He chose to lead.

He led as well by learning the lessons from his near-failure in 2000. Lessons like: How to keep working hard even when you think you’ve achieved your aim. How to build political support by working to elect senators and congressmen who agree with you and will fight alongside you.

And, most important, he and his political team figured out that the path to victory required an attention to detail about the days immediately surrounding an election – the kind of detail that Republicans never took all that seriously. They constructed an extraordinary machine to enhance and improve the turnout of those voters who would side with him, and the results were there for everybody to see last night.

In particular, he scored a 300,000-vote victory in the state of Florida, increasing his margin over the 930-vote victory he achieved in 2000 by an unimaginable percentage.

Now here we are. He has been re-elected president, scoring more votes than anyone has ever gotten before him, and it appears, also scoring the first absolute majority in the popular vote since 1988.

But what matters is what he did. How he governed. How he led.

The man of action will again be our president.

He deserved his re-election.

And we are lucky to have George W. Bush working for us.