Inside The Mind Of George W. Bush

By Nancy Gibbs And John F. Dickerson

George Bush is roaming around his Prairie Chapel ranch house in boots, slacks and a linen shirt, naming the native grasses, spotting the herons--admiring the butterflies, for heaven's sake. This is to be a day of image softening, and another magazine's crew is waiting to do a family photo shoot. Bush has remade this Texas landscape to suit him: put in a lake and stocked it, planted the oaks and laid out the house so the winds would sweep through it. That's the way of his world: something to be shaped, by work and will. Whatever his handlers say, the softening will have to wait because right now he could not be more serious.

We have asked if he thinks peace is even possible. Can the U.S.'s enemies ever be defeated, and can you really use an army to plant democracy in an Arab country? That is the question he comes back to in the hot driveway after the formal interview is over, what he says it's all about--the campaign, the presidency, the one thing he has learned for certain after nearly four years as leader of the free world. "If I didn't think it was possible," he says, "I would bring the troops home tomorrow. Why would I risk losing one more soldier's life? But you know what? The whole world is watching. And we cannot waver now or show any doubt." Otherwise, not only will Iraq and Afghanistan fail but other vulnerable states will as well. On one thing at least he and John Kerry agree: the stakes could not be higher.

Four years ago, in his convention speech, George Bush had something to say about Bill Clinton: "Our current President embodied the potential of a generation. So many talents. So much charm ... But, in the end, to what end? So much promise, to no great purpose." Clinton returned fire at the Democratic Convention in Boston last month. "Strength and wisdom," he declared, "are not opposing values." That was his delicate version of the venomous bumper sticker: BUSH: LIKE A ROCK, ONLY DUMBER. But lest John Kerry get smug, Clinton is the guy who warned his fellow Democrats in December 2002 that voters in dangerous times may prefer a candidate who is strong and wrong to one who is weak and right.

So if Kerry's test in Boston was to show voters that he is not weak, Bush's task at the Republican Convention in New York City this week is to show that he is not wrong, that his strength comes not from a six-gun temperament but from judgment that has matured through three years of hard testing. His vital audience is not that portion of the electorate that sees him as a savior, nor is it the inflamed opposition that calls him a liar and a zealot. He needs to reach the voters who are unsure about either voting for him or voting at all; who don't think he lied but may think he made mistakes; who like his manner but question his judgment; who are glad Saddam is gone but wonder if the price was too high; who wonder whether John Kerry really knows his mind but also whether George Bush ever opens his. Those voters aren't looking for an apology. They do need to see the President growing in the job or get a better idea of where he is going, because his task is not about to get any easier.

After Bush's nearly four years onstage, his world view has become his fate. "There's no question this is the most polarizing President in our history," says a veteran of his White House. "But that's his world. He sees things in black and white, and, well, guess what? Now people see him that way too. He made them that way. People either hate him or love him." People don't just disagree over his policies. They argue over the basic question of who he is, his intelligence, his integrity and his intentions. Was he a closet ideologue biding his time? Or did 9/11 change everything? People even disagree with themselves. Critics who once deplored his arrogance in dealing with Congress and the world felt differently when they sensed their safety was at stake. Some who praised his leadership in targeting Afghanistan condemned him for leading on to Iraq. His approval ratings have plummeted from 90% to 42% over the course of his term. George W. Bush may be unique among modern Presidents in being so transparent, so consistent and so divisive.

How does he reach out now, beyond wrapping his arms around popular G.O.P. moderates and sprinkling the compassion back onto the conservatism? He's not one to reinvent himself at this point. His hair is grayer, and his knees are shot from three-mile runs with little stretching, but overall he is remarkably unchanged by the events of his presidency. In talking to him, you get the sense he really cares about just one question: Who will keep you safer? Bush says "steady, strong leadership" is the card he puts on the table--he has stared down history. His rivals on the Democratic ticket, he suggests, are bound to blink. "If they're going to change one day, they may change again," he tells a Las Vegas crowd. "I think you need somebody who's gonna do what he says he's gonna do." Dick Cheney's version: "Indecision kills."

Voters wrestling with the confounding and controversial presidency of George W. Bush will have to decide whether, given the times we live in, that unyielding conviction is the best reason to vote for him or a reason not to. At least this time, he says, they know what they are getting and can judge for themselves whether he has chosen the right course. For his part, he doesn't look back. "I'm not the historian," he says. "I'm the guy making history."

WHY BUSH DOESN'T BUDGE

If Clinton implied that the essence of wisdom is being able to change, Bush has learned that for him, wisdom lies in knowing when not to. In foreign policy, he views resolution as a weapon: enemies will yield only if they conclude that he will not. At home he sees his constancy as a way to impress cynical voters and guide distractible aides. By Bush's math, you can change your tactics, but you pay a price for changing your principles and can gain capital by toughing out a fight, even if you lose. He cites the lessons he drew from his quixotic crusade as Governor of Texas to reform the state's tax code: in the end he feels he lost a battle and won a war, that voters credited him with attempting an impossible but worthy task. "I had earned political capital by spending it," Bush observed in his account of the showdown. He is less likely to cite the searing lesson of watching his father break a promise not to raise taxes and be fired for it. That example is tricky, of course, given that many economists agreed that G.H.W. Bush had done the right thing in reversing course, even if voters didn't see it that way.

During his first months in office, Bush focused on fulfilling his promise to cut taxes $1.6 trillion over 10 years. Democrats called the new President high-handed and stubborn, especially for one who could hardly claim popular support for so ambitious a policy; they were thinking maybe $500 billion. Bush's congressional liaison, Nick Calio, suggested to the President that he cut the price tag to buy some votes. But Bush's answer was always the same: "It's not time yet. We're going to say $1.6 trillion. People are going to get upset about it, but we're going to say it over and over. Are we going to compromise? When I say the time is right. Until then we're going to say 1.6." One day, walking out of the Oval Office, he said, "Nicky, don't wobble." In May, Bush got his deal, at $1.3 trillion.

You could say Bush learned his respect for constancy the hard way. His midlife crisis consisted not of moody indulgence, a motorcycle or a mistress but the opposite: quitting the booze, finding the Bible, buckling down. With enough discipline, you can accomplish transformation. His political life reflects his personal rhythm. He is always on time. He wakes up, works out and goes to bed at nearly the same time every day, sticks with peanut butter and jelly and old friends. He is uncomfortable taping in advance a radio spot that says he's in California when he's in Washington. And once he believes something, he's not likely to doubt it because it becomes a sustaining belief, a personal way to get through the challenges of the day.

Thus Bush said he was going to lead, and he has, mandates be damned. Members of his team came into office saying they wouldn't be day traders in the marketplace of ideas but would stick to first principles, and with a few conspicuous exceptions, they have. The economic landscape changed, but Bush's faith in tax cuts has not. When he did reverse course, on campaign-finance reform or creating the Department of Homeland Security, he did it so brazenly, without explanation or apology, that even caving was portrayed as an act of bold leadership. Above all, he has defended his decision to target Saddam Hussein even when some of the basic premises of the war turned out to be wrong. He has continued to argue that he has set Iraq on the path to democracy even when others say its future is so much in doubt.

THE SURPRISE PRESIDENCY

And yet for all that consistency, the Bush presidency has been one long surprise. A happy surprise for social conservatives, who thanked God that Little George was so unlike his father. They found in the son all the father's flaws removed, a standard bearer who spoke his mind, wore his faith on his sleeve; who didn't slice everything prosciutto-thin; who knew how to draw a line in the sand and stick to it. Smoke 'em out; dead or alive; you're with us or you're with the terrorists.

But it has been an enraging surprise for liberals who thought that, apart from all his moderate mood music four years ago, Bush would have no choice after a virtual tie election and with an evenly divided Congress but to govern from the center. In every campaign promise he has kept, they find one he has broken. "I don't think that we have had a President in recent memory who did such an about-face after getting elected," Senator Hillary Clinton tells TIME. All that compassionate-conservative talk, many Democrats decided, was just for show. He promised to restore trust to the office but even lied about that. "I can only conclude that he's a bait-and-switch politician," says Senator Clinton. "He campaigns on unity and changing the tone, and he has absolutely no intention of following through on any of that."

Or maybe you just weren't listening, observes her husband. Bill Clinton argued in June that Bush "is just doing what he said he'd do in the campaign." Bush always made it clear that if being a uniter and being a leader were ever to conflict, he would follow his beliefs, divisive or not. "I believe great decisions are made with care, made with conviction, not made with polls," he said in his first convention speech. "I do not need to take your pulse before I know my own mind." It may be that even people who were watching closely four years ago heard only what they wanted to hear--especially those in the moderate wing of the party. "Republicans were as energized then as Democrats are today," says an Administration veteran. "They would have elected Donald Duck. The coalition that came together for George doesn't always come together, but it did for him." This includes some of the 30,000 on the Bush family's Christmas-card list who should have known better than to imagine that the son would essentially serve out the father's second term. They knew W. was charming and stubborn and sour-mouthed, much more like his mom than his dad. They knew he was more partisan by far than his father, that he loved to shock people--an amiable guy who still liked to pick a fight. But Republicans of all stripes wanted a restoration so badly, the moderates persuaded themselves they could trust the Bush brand, trust that 43 would turn out like 41: diplomatic in foreign policy, pragmatic at home. It turns out that the acorn had landed some ways from the tree.

HOW THE UNITER BECAME A DIVIDER

The sun was going down on the Christmas decorations in the Oval Office, and the President wanted a present. For five months in 2001, the education barons in Congress had been haggling over Bush's signature education-reform bill, No Child Left Behind. "I've asked you all to come down here to get something done," said Bush, careful to spread his eyes across all four visitors. This was not the moment to show his contempt for the impulse of lawmakers to stonewall and grandstand and leak as they pursue their narrow self-interests. This was a moment for ego massage. "Had any of you decided that you didn't want to get something done," Bush said, "the process would have cratered." California Democrat George Miller was worried that there was not enough money. "Let's not pretend the education establishment is happy," Miller said.

"That must mean it's pretty good," said Bush with a smile. Despite his concerns, Miller too remarked on how far they had all got. The bipartisan cooperation was "the most remarkable thing I've seen in my 25 years," Miller said. "And I'll make sure you get the credit," Bush promised, if the group would "get her done and close her up." Soon after, Bush signed the bill and hit the road, visiting the barons' home states to praise their statesmanship. "This should be a model of how to get things done," he said.

Maybe it would have been, had that been the end of the story. But three weeks later, Bush submitted a budget to Congress that fell short of what Democrats claimed he had promised them for schools. All told, complains Senator Ted Kennedy, the driving force on education issues among the Democrats, Bush has shortchanged No Child Left Behind to the tune of $26 billion. "President Bush is personable, he's engaging, and he has very strong political skills," Kennedy says, all of which just made it worse for Democrats when they concluded they had been had. "They've effectively abandoned school reform," says Kennedy. Senator Clinton believes that on issue after issue, Bush was mainly concerned with uniting people who agreed with him. She summarizes his attitude this way: "I know what I know, and what I know is right. You just all fall in line, and we'll be fine."

But anyone expecting that Bush was going to stock his Cabinet with centrists and create a national unity government did not understand how he viewed the landscape. He told TIME in December 2000 that he believed he had won a mandate. In any case, says Calio, "The idea was to move quickly and start tucking accomplishments under the belt, so that you would refute the notion that there was no mandate and that nothing could be accomplished."

Democrats remember the week before Bush was sworn in--the crisp but friendly meetings with lawmakers from both parties, the kind for which Bush had been famous when he was Governor of Texas. Republican Senate leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert were quickly treated to a heavy courtship, but Democrats were also promised a place in the partnership. Bush assured minority leader Dick Gephardt, "I'll tell you what I think, and I hope you'll do the same with me." Gephardt thought Bush would be good to his word and couldn't help liking the guy.

But even as both sides settled into the legislative agenda, the White House was moving quickly on other fronts. Within the first few months the Administration helped strike down workplace-safety regulations, tried to make it harder for people to declare bankruptcy, froze stricter regulations governing road building in wilderness areas and arsenic pollution, and rejected the Kyoto global-warming treaty over the objections of Bush's own EPA chief, Christie Whitman. Democrats were appalled by what they saw as a hard right turn. The Bushies suggest that Democrats just got mad at being outmaneuvered. "Democrats think he's not nearly as smart as they are," says Calio. "Then he sets out and makes friends, and that catches them off guard and ticks people off. Then he starts getting things done, and this guy who is not as smart as I am is kicking my butt."

Former Texas Governor Ann Richards, whom Bush defeated, had warned Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle that Bush's friendliness was just a show. Bush, she claimed, would do anything to get his way. A former Air Force intelligence officer, Daschle is plenty tough as well. He was called the Velvet Hammer for moving softly behind the scenes to enforce discipline within his party. By fall the battle lines had been drawn--and then, in an instant, everything changed. Two days after 9/11, Daschle stood at a rare bipartisan lunch. "We're not Democrats here, and we're not Republicans," Daschle told the group. "We're Americans. So let's do the right thing." On Sept. 21, when Bush walked down the aisle of the House to deliver an address to Congress, he stopped before Daschle, and the two men had a warm embrace. Suddenly Bush had become the frictionless leader of a united country; virtually no one was arguing with him now. A month later, the USA Patriot Act passed by a vote of 98 to 1 in the Senate.

That mood barely lasted another week. In November at a small breakfast that included the four top congressional leaders and Bush and Cheney, the President asked Daschle to move quickly on some controversial judicial nominees. Nothing doing, Daschle said. After the breakfast meeting broke up, Lott pulled Bush and Cheney aside and said, "That's the real Tom Daschle you just saw." Daschle felt he had also seen the real George Bush when the President insisted on pushing through another tax cut, with or without the Democrats on board. Soon Cheney went on TV denouncing Daschle and the Democrats as obstructionists in perilous times. While Bush was characteristically careful not to say a disparaging word, the rest of his team fired away. Hate mail began pouring into Daschle's office, and his security had to be increased.

Daschle concluded that the White House, even after 9/11, had never stopped running every decision through a political filter. Bush's team was able to take the issue of creating the Department of Homeland Security, which the President initially opposed, and ultimately use it against Democrats in the 2002 midterm elections by suggesting the party cared more about protecting its labor supporters than protecting the country. "This is an ideological Administration that's different from Reagan and Bush One, which were very conservative but principled," Kennedy argues. "They wanted to win, but this Administration wants to destroy the opposition."

But Bush wasn't fighting just the Democrats. At times he was fighting the entire Congress. Representative democracy is a messy business, and a CEO White House doesn't like a legislature of second-guessers and time wasters. Bush and Cheney shared a view that they had a mission to restore power to the presidency. They felt justified in bypassing Congress altogether on a variety of moves--making energy policy in secret, creating military tribunals by executive order, withholding budget information about the true cost of Medicare reform, resisting congressional investigations into intelligence failures and providing only the vaguest estimates of the future costs of the war on terrorism.

Many Republicans bristled at how the White House dealt with Congress. After the first year, informal consultations dropped off dramatically. "This Administration built no bridges," complains a G.O.P. Senator. "It was stunning to everybody." Another Republican Senator says that even when profound questions are at stake, "[Bush] doesn't like the give-and-take." At a meeting with Democratic and G.O.P. lawmakers wary about voting for the Iraq-war resolution, the President, according to a Republican Senator, walked in and said, "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the Senators interrupted to ask him a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you." Republicans who step off the reservation are reviled by the White House even more than Democrats are. "You're essentially considered the enemy," says another G.O.P. Senator who has crossed swords with the White House. "And they use that term with you."

For his part, Bush portrays himself as not the perpetrator but the victim of inflexibility. "Washington is a much more bitter, ugly place, dominated by special interests, than I ever envisioned," he tells TIME. "If you sign on to this idea, you will then betray this cause." Bush says he will keep trying to reach out to the other side, but he is not about to change his ways. "I'm going to make hard decisions. Some don't like that. But my job is to solve problems, not pass them on."

He still has big problems to solve if he wins a second term, including some of his own making. He talks proudly about having got results, but the results are mixed. There are lots of Republicans who hate the expensive Medicare prescription-drug bill, fiscal conservatives who are horrified by a $237 billion surplus turning into a $396 billion deficit, Governors even in red states who complain that No Child Left Behind is underfunded and unworkable. Bush plans to lay out this week his vision for an "ownership society," which amounts to lots of little programs aimed at changing the relationship between citizens and institutions. He thinks that maybe things will go better this time, not because he would change but because the politics would. "I will be less threatening a person in the second term," he notes. "I mean, I won't be running again."

WHAT HAPPENED TO A HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY?

The notion that 9/11 transformed Bush from a replica of his diplomat father into a bellowing warmonger may resonate with critics who see the Bush Doctrine as the greatest betrayal of his 2000 campaign rhetoric. But the evidence suggests otherwise. Back in 1999, when the Texas Governor was still just a primary candidate, his world view was plain to see. "Let me be clear," he said. "Our first line of defense is a simple message: Every group or nation must know, if they sponsor such [terrorist] attacks, our response will be devastating." Asked by TIME just after the election how he would respond to a challenge from Saddam, Bush replied, "I've learned one thing--I'd jump on him. If we launched strikes and they're halfway to the targets, we wouldn't turn them back. I assure you that. If they're launched, they will unload unless [Saddam] backs down. I won't turn them back based on some focus groups."

As that statement suggests, Bush felt that Clinton's sensitivity to public opinion had weakened the U.S. in the eyes of its enemies. During the campaign he often talked about rebuilding American power and prestige by means that included deploying a missile-defense system that would require tearing up long-established treaties. Critics who accuse Bush of hypocrisy often cite his stating during a 2000 presidential debate that "if we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us." But that was an answer designed, says a Bush adviser, to paint Al Gore as a know-it-all and send a signal to Israel that Bush was not going to meddle in its affairs. Condoleezza Rice did promise that the 82nd Airborne wouldn't be escorting children to school, but it was the small acts of international charity and the global police functions--as in Haiti and Somalia--to which Bush team members objected. Once nation building was a means to solve the greatest security threat of our time, they no longer saw it as a waste of U.S. manpower and prestige.

All of which is not to say that 9/11 had no effect on the President. He has said it did. But characteristically, it was more a magnifying impact than a transforming one, reinforcing his faith in action, strength and constancy. That has been a pattern, especially when it comes to events that affect him deeply. Far from lacking a learning curve, Bush may have an overlearning curve. You have only to look at what he drew from his father's defeat to see the tendency. If George H.W. Bush got in trouble for raising taxes, W. would cut them no matter what. Far from ignoring the party base, he has courted it to the point that polls show he's having a hard time winning over swing voters. He didn't hire a callow kid as his Vice President but instead a commanding political veteran whose power is as controversial as his policies. The father's Gulf War stopped at the Kuwait border; the son's drove right to Baghdad. And if the father had a problem with the vision thing, too sparse and stingy for an optimistic age, Bush is all vision during these hard times: bring world peace, spread democracy, redirect history. "We are changing the world," he often says. He tells TIME, "We'll look back, and we'll say, 'You know, thank God the United States held true to its belief.'"

It was natural, then, when it came to Iraq, for Bush to conclude that the risks of underreacting were greater than the risks of overreacting. Bush's world view was so designed around strength that he could hardly have pulled back on Iraq once he became convinced that Saddam posed a short-term threat and that spreading democracy in the Arab world was a long-term necessity. Unlike in domestic affairs, where Bush could cut a deal at the end, there was no way to launch half an invasion. Devoted to action and surrounded by advisers who admired tough calls, Bush created a system that was almost designed for confrontation.

The praise heaped on Bush for his handling of 9/11 also had to reinforce his faith in his instincts. Even the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung saw Bush growing into his role as world leader. "Before our eyes," the paper said a month after the attacks, "the 55-year-old former Governor has become grayer, more profound and more sure-footed." The attacks only deepened Bush's impulse to trust in strength for its own sake, particularly given that earlier al-Qaeda attacks had drawn only limited response and thus perhaps emboldened Osama bin Laden. "Al-Qaeda underestimated us, see," Bush told TIME aboard Air Force One in December 2001. "He [bin Laden] thought we're soft. He made a huge miscalculation, huge. And I'm sure he's now cowering in some cave, wondering, you know, what went wrong."

Strength and resolve were the warning to bin Laden, but they were also the message to the U.S.'s allies. "The more I look at those leaders who come to see me--and I look them in the eye and say, 'We're not wavering, and I expect you to be with us'--the more likely it is that we're going to rub terror out, and the more likely it is that the coalitions stay intact," Bush said in 2001. "I'm not going to relent. People may get tired of all this, but I'm not going to. Because I understand--I truly understand the call."

With allies, Bush saw his strength as creating a position of such clear leadership, it would draw the heads of other countries behind him. Almost until the very end of the diplomatic duel over a U.N. resolution supporting war in Iraq, many in the Administration believed that France and other countries opposed to the U.S.'s plans would fall under this spell. That remained true even as the war unfolded. "The way to win international acceptance is to win," a senior Bush aide said bluntly in the winter of 2003. "That's called diplomacy--winning." Being certain and strong was also necessary, Bush believed, to keep his team motivated. "A President has got to be the calcium in the backbone," Bush told author Bob Woodward. "If I weaken, the whole team weakens. If I'm doubtful, I can assure you there will be a lot of doubt."

The most damning charge against Bush may come from critics who share his view of the stakes in the war on terrorism but challenge his approach. In that view the Iraq war, with its high cost, was a diversion, not a necessity. It divided a country that was united as long as U.S. energy was focused on hunting down bin Laden, rolling up al-Qaeda around the world, upgrading security measures at home and trying to put Afghanistan on a road to stability. Now that country's President can scarcely leave home without risking being shot, while the occupation of an Arab country by a U.S. army, however well meaning, has further inflamed many Muslims and alienated U.S. allies. "9/11 taught us the costs of inaction," observes Democratic Senator Evan Bayh. "Maybe Iraq is teaching us the cost of action."

Many Democrats who supported the war now say if they had known the true state of Saddam's arsenal, they would not have gone along. But Bush treats such doubts as a failure of will. "I've seen no second thoughts by him at all," Democratic Senator John Breaux says of Bush. Even though many congressional Republicans believe privately that the chances are no better than fifty-fifty that the U.S. will be successful in Iraq, Bush's friends say the President gives no hint in private conversations that he is discouraged. If he did waver, there would be political hell to pay. "We're getting close to having a thousand soldiers dead in Iraq," says a Republican Senator. "A lot of people are upset, and the polls have changed. So if the President in any way opens that door a little bit and says, 'Maybe we didn't think this thing through well enough,' that could be disastrous politically."

WHAT DID HE LEARN FROM IRAQ?

Most of Iraq was not actually in flames in April, but it looked that way on TV, and Bush had to perform the cleansing ritual he likes least: a prime-time press conference, in the East Room. Asked by a TIME correspondent what he considered his biggest mistake and what he had learned from it, the President chased the wet bar of soap around the tub for a while and then conceded he had no answer. At a time when only 48% of Americans support his handling of the war, he has a fine line to walk: to make his case that he was right while showing he has learned from what went wrong.

Bush constantly cites the example of postwar Germany and Japan to argue that it is far too soon to call Iraq a failure. In turn he sounds like Truman, Johnson and Reagan when he says war and its aftermath are always hard and messy, that a failed state would be a disaster causing dominoes to fall, that a free Iraq would be a beacon to the world. Asked again last week what his greatest mistake was, he is ready with an answer. "Had we had to do it over again," he says, "we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day." If he learned in Texas that even failure can yield benefits, he learned in Iraq that even success comes at a cost.

The war has become a case study in weighing the value of a show of strength, and Fallujah is the fulcrum. The city exploded in March, when a mob killed four U.S. private security contractors and played with their charred bodies like beach balls. The President reacted as expected. This would not be his Somalia. On the night of the killings, at 6:15, General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, called the White House residence to give word that within 72 hours there would be a "specific and overwhelming attack to restore justice," as a senior Administration official put it.

But the unleashing never happened. Instead, U.S. forces began an assault and then withdrew. A senior White House official explained the reversal a week later. "We've demonstrated that we can be tough, but we need to show that we can be smart," he said. "I know that makes people anxious who want to turn Fallujah into a parking lot, but you can win the battle and lose the war." Hawkish critics immediately called the new softening a retreat. But it was only one of many examples of shifting tactics. Bush won't change his mind when the French want to avoid a war at all costs, but he is willing to change course if there's a smarter way to get where he wants to go. He still thinks international institutions like the U.N. are feckless and weak, but he now understands they have a role to play.

Having confronted the limits of military power, Bush had little choice but to embrace the U.N. as the midwife of Iraqi independence. In November he hauled L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. proconsul, back to Washington for consultations and set a timetable to restore sovereignty to Iraq, having concluded that the Iraqis would not fall in line behind an American, no matter who he was. Bush knew that Bremer was getting beaten up in the media for the occupation's failings, so when the two went walking outside within sight of the cameras, Bush put his arm around Bremer while photographers took the shot. "Access to power is power in Washington," Bush once told an aide.

Bush, who once spoke of being a war President, now refers to himself as a peace President who would spend a second term working to repair damaged relations and build democracy in the Middle East. He has repeatedly sent the signal to Arab countries in interviews with their media that he's not keen on more invasions. After three years of criticizing Bush for high-handedness, some foreign officials at the G8 summit in June saw a real change. U.S. officials, they said, were more willing to listen, more interested in finding a pragmatic solution to their differences. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, long in the White House doghouse after opposing the war in Iraq, was moved to declare after a meeting with Bush at the summit, "There has been a remarkable change in the American foreign policy." Of course, many were saying that back when Bush went to the U.N. for a seal of approval on the invasion, but he went to war without it.

THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE

As the nation's first M.B.A. President, Bush took to the White House a businessman's case-study training rather than a lawyer's conceptual toolbox. But if a concept will solve a problem, he can embrace it with a convert's passion. Once he was convinced that phonics worked, he put the reading theory at the center of his Texas education plan. A similar thing happened on the way to war. In that case the concept was the neoconservatives' largely academic belief in the transforming power of freedom in the Middle East. The neocons' vision to remake the world is, to Bush, deeply practical; it is meant to keep more planes from flying into buildings.

As he was practicing his convention speech last week, he noticed that the language explaining this theory of liberation had been watered down. "Look," he said, loudly enough to startle his aides, "does everyone get why we're doing this? Why I sent troops into battle? This is big. This is big. This is big." The language was restored to its original form.

Bush is the first to say "I'm not a textbook player. I'm a gut player." While he reads history like a user's manual--he has finished Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton and is now on to one about Charles Lindbergh--Bush typically seems less curious about people's arguments than their motives for making them. That has its drawbacks. When the French warned about the potential hazards of occupying an Arab country--lessons learned from their colonial history--Bush's focus on their motives for avoiding war left little room for consideration of their arguments. Maybe Hans Blix wasn't just a peacenik but truly couldn't find weapons stockpiles. In fact, lots of people in a position to warn about risks that needed to be factored into the planning--we won't be welcomed, we will need more troops, the oil revenues won't pay for it, we will end up with a civil war--were seen as arguing against the war by other means.

Bush talks proudly about how his team members did have their disputes, but at the end of the day, everyone saluted and "got after it," as Bush would say. He talks about the process of decision making almost as proudly as the product. For him, the two are inseparable. "I had an advantage," Bush says. "I got to watch someone else do the job up close. I saw what it involved, saw some structural things that got in the way of his making good decisions." He concluded that flattening the hierarchy is what prevents your being isolated by your power. "If I were interviewing a guy for the job of President," Bush offers, "I'd ask, How do you make decisions? How would you get unfiltered information? Would you surround yourself with hacks? Are you scared of smart people? I've seen the effect of the Oval Office on people. People are prepared to come in and speak their minds, and then they get in there, and the place overwhelms them, and they say, 'Gee, Mr. President, you're looking good.' I need people who can walk in and say, 'Hey, you're not looking so great today.'"

So how does someone who talks so much about getting good information deal with getting something so big so wrong? Bush will defend to his last breath the decision to target Saddam, weapons or no, but he now talks like a convert about the need for intelligence reform. "Look, I asked a lot of questions beforehand," he says of the prewar intelligence. "Anytime you put a large group of people into a combat zone, you ask a lot of questions." Having said that, he admits he is now asking even more. "We've just got to make sure that everybody's voices are heard as the dots are connected."

Also, Bush is captive to his strong belief in loyalty. He didn't go after CIA chief George Tenet or anyone else for failures over 9/11 or prewar Iraq intelligence. When chief of staff Andrew Card was looking for a replacement for ousted Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Card phoned one of the wise men of business and politics to consult. After discussing the merits of several candidates for a short time, Card interjected. "But are they loyal?" he asked. "That's the most important thing." Says the called consultant: "Loyalty seemed to be all they care about." Bush would say the only way to have a truly free debate internally is if all involved are confident they won't read about who won and who lost in the next day's paper. But O'Neill says he never remembers that kind of debate happening in the first place.

This week in New York City, the Republicans are going to be selling moderation in bulk. With Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger as his warm-up, Bush will pivot to talking about that ownership society. The Republican National Committee has foreshadowed the message of the day by boasting that the delegates are the convention's most diverse ever. How do they know? They have counted. The pageant will probably cause seizures among Bush's enemies. But they are not the target audience.

Bush has always played in the shadows of expectation--holding back and letting people's misimpressions grow and then coming forward to surprise them. The next few weeks will show whether he has run out that string. Wavering voters who were surprised by how his presidency has unfolded want to know what the next term may bring. To the extent that voters say they are putting pocketbook issues ahead of security concerns for now, he will have to show that he understands where they are. But there is little doubt about where Bush is. In a second term he will be just as intensely focused on the One Big Issue over which he has the most real influence. --With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON