The fact is that the White House did perform impressively on a set of issues that threatened to rip apart its electoral coalition. And a President who won a breathtakingly close, disputed election last December and is pressing a policy agenda for which there is no apparent public market has managed to bank a major tax cut and keep alive other initiatives during his first half year in office. Stumbles and setbacks, domestic and international, have also been part of the record, of course, but the President has managed to keep his head above the turbulent waters.

So why does this President's record feel less substantial, more contrived, than might seem merited? That's where the two of you come in.

Was I the only one struck by the bizarre nature of Karen's briefing on the President's decision-making process on the stem-cell issue? We were told that he met with serious people and asked probing questions. He read articles and books. He wrestled with the difficult tradeoffs between science and ethics. He kept politics out of the Oval Office. Your recitation of the details of his activities on this issue diminished rather than enhanced the President's stature. The proof of a president's deliberative style is to be found in the quality of the decision and in his ability to persuade others of its wisdom. When a senior staff member feels obliged to puff her boss's seriousness, the impression left is more one of condescension than respect. One wonders why, as the President suggested in Italy, he did not engage in a similar deliberative process on the tax cut, budget, global warming and national missile defense. And to categorically deny the obvious—that politics was central if not decisive in reaching the decision (and appropriately so)—is to raise further doubts about the President you serve.

This is not an isolated incident. The pattern encompasses the President's policies as well as personal qualities. When the President squeezed Rep. Charlie Norwood to abandon his co-sponsors on the patients' bill of rights and cut a separate deal with the White House, an impressive, LBJ-style, hard-nosed partisan victory is trumpeted as a great bipartisan achievement. A tax cut conceived for a time of economic expansion and growing budget surpluses to benefit those who pay most of the income taxes is sold as a Keynesian stimulus for a slowing economy that rewards all Americans. A budget plan insufficient to keep pace with inflation and an expanding population is said to provide ample room for a more robust defense and a compassionately conservative government. A social security privatization plan that requires huge transition financing and lowered guaranteed benefits for retirees is acclaimed as a cost-free fix for a bankrupt social insurance system whose trust-fund assets are said to be nonexistent.

All politicians try to put the best face on their policies. Stitching together an ideologically diverse coalition requires programmatic and verbal dexterity that might not meet the rarified standards of theorists of deliberative democracy. The tools of the modern-day permanent campaign—polling, packaging and marketing—are utilized by all participants in the policy process. It would be unfair to expect President Bush to unilaterally disarm. But for a politician who promised to restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office, his administration's Alice-in-Wonderland disjuncture between words and deeds, between rhetoric and reality, raises troubling questions about public character.

So my advice, Karen and Karl, is to lighten up a bit. The spin is increasingly transparent. If the President's policies are wise, don't pretend they are something else. If he has a thoughtful and deliberative decision-making style, don't tell us about it, let him demonstrate it to the country. If the President really believes bipartisanship can achieve objectives he favors, then have him seriously engage the Democratic congressional leadership. If you intend to continue to rely overwhelmingly on your own party, spare us the empty rhetoric. If you believe his admirable personal qualities are not fully recognized by the citizenry, don't dream up more hokey media events like "Home to the Heartland." Instead, let him take his vacations in peace and then afterwards let us see him unscripted and uncensored in genuine encounters with politicians, journalists and citizens.

In others words if, as seems clear, you believe fully in the personal capabilities and policies of your boss, show a little more confidence in him and them.