Unwittingly, perhaps, "Ambling into History" is a case study in how masterfully the Bush team framed his candidacy, and now his presidency, for the media, so that the most important questions became "Is Bush a nice guy?" and "Is he smarter than he seems?" instead of "Is he competent to be president?" Bruni takes 278 pages (in galleys at least) to answer a resounding "Yes" to both questions.

The book doesn't probe anything Bush thinks, believes or stands for, and Bruni lets himself off the hook for that omission by telling us, early on, that he's not going to. His book "is dedicated primarily to what Bush looked and acted like on the edges of what was usually considered news, to the personality behind the policies and the often offbeat character that flickered through the frippery and pomp." He pays almost no attention to Bush's politics because "the nature of his conservatism, nuances of his proposals and contours of his biography have been fairly well established." This is silly. Writing a book about the president's "personality" without any attention to what he stands for is itself frippery.

But even on its own merits -- proving that Bush is a nice guy who's smarter than he's given credit for -- the book falls short. This is a man who, even under Bruni's loving gaze, comes across as a goofball. Our future president is seen making faces at a news conference about a heat wave that killed Texans; mugging and cutting up at a memorial for victims of a church shooting; mocking the way convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker begged him for her life before she was executed. (Bruni leaves out Bush's unbelievably dumb "joke" about the World Trade Center attacks: He told a Florida audience in December that his first thought was: "There's one terrible pilot.")

I would be fascinated if Bruni brought insight to the question of how Bush can be so inappropriately callous at some times and so softhearted at others. We see him get teary-eyed when asked his reaction to Sept. 11, blurting out "I'm a loving guy" as though there's a debate about that. Just what are those easy tears all about? There are other mysteries: What did candidate Bush do with the rage that made many people doubt he had the self-discipline to run for president? How did he conquer his drinking problem? A book that looked exclusively at Bush's personality might be forgiven if it did so with depth and insight. But Bruni never threatens to scratch the surface of his subject.

All we really get is the same cartoonish version of Bush we see for ourselves every day on television, with Bruni's seal of approval, Panchito's promise that the president he knows better than we do is nicer, smarter and deeper than many of us think. Ignore the malapropisms and strange smirks, the befuddled expressions when compelled to go beyond his talking points, Bruni tells us. Bush has risen to the challenge of the job, especially since Sept. 11, he wants us to believe -- but he offers almost no proof.

It would be wrong to single out Bruni as though he's alone in this superficial rendering of Bush; since the terror war began, virtually the entire press corps has striven mightily to see a masterful leader instead of a bumbling figurehead. This book reminds us, though, that the soft-focus approach to covering Bush began way before wartime, even at the nation's best newspaper. "Ambling into History" should worry a lot of people, but they're sleeping just fine at the White House.

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