Frustration Nation

By Mike Allen

George W. Bush has always been suspicious, even contemptuous, of introspection. "I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror," he once bragged, "except when I comb my hair." Last week, though, he suddenly yielded to reporters' endless, and hitherto fruitless, efforts to plumb his moods. Days after aides had taken pains to tell reporters the President had not expressed frustration in a meeting about Iraq, Kelly O'Donnell of NBC pressed, "But are you frustrated, sir?"

"Frustrated?" he replied. "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy ... But war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country."

He might as well have busted out some French or broken into song. George Bush was putting the country on the couch. Republicans and Democrats alike flashed back to Jimmy Carter's assertion in July 1979 that the country was suffering "a crisis of confidence." Only political junkies know that Carter never actually used the word malaise. And only the most astute historian remembers that he got an initial bounce in the polls. In the long run, though, the speech was judged a disaster and set the stage for Ronald Reagan to use sunny optimism to run Carter out of town. George H.W. Bush, accepting the vice-presidential nomination in 1984, promised that the country would not return to the "malaise days" of his Democratic predecessors.

One other President, also a Democrat, regretted venturing into psychobabble. Bill Clinton, squatting in jeans in the press cabin of Air Force One, said as he geared up for his re-election run that he was "trying to get people to get out of their funk," provoking mocking headlines like DR. CLINTON, NATIONAL THERAPIST.

Some of Bush's friends were mystified by his remark last week and concluded that it must be a phrase he picked up in a briefing. "It's pollster talk," said one person who speaks often to the President. A senior Administration official said the President was simply saying he recognizes that the protracted war on terrorism inevitably takes a toll on the public. "He wasn't saying there's some kind of crisis of confidence," the official said. "Just the opposite: he believes Americans have the ability to sustain a long struggle." But Bush's comment reflected the increased pessimism about Iraq that is seeping through the Administration. "It's a little hard for us to keep saying there'll be good days and bad days when they're all bad days," an aide said, moping.

The President himself is unchanged, say people who spend private hours with him, even as he gears up for the stretch run of the midterm-election campaign, which has Republicans more worried than they have been in a dozen years. His traditional summer sojourn at his ranch was cut from a month to nine days, but he dived into the gritty, sweaty labor that he loves. Each week aides put a new photo album on a credenza outside the door to the Oval Office for the President and visitors to savor; the current edition features Bush in T shirt, ball cap and goggles, using power tools to cut a bike path through Texas scrub.

Bush's aides maintain that they're in no funk either. Previewing the final quarter of Bush's presidency, officials disclosed to TIME that the Administration is formulating a huge energy initiative designed to "change the whole nature of the discussion" and challenge the G.O.P., Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and environmentalists. An adviser said Bush's views about global warming have evolved. "Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bush and Cheney--two oilmen--can bring all these parties kicking and screaming to the table," the adviser said.

Whatever the coming months hold, Bush advisers said they could safely predict there would be no more Dr. Phil--speak. The President doesn't fret in private, they say, so he won't in public. A friend said Bush hopes his ultimate legacy will be that he engaged the war on terrorism and started a multigenerational process of winning it, the way Harry Truman began winning the cold war. No one remembers Harry Truman ruminating about the nation's temperament.