When George W. Bush ran for president, he mocked Bill Clinton's addiction to pollsters and promised
to tear down the cynical White House trellis of politics and policy. As it turned out, Mr. Bush didn't need
the permanent campaign. He has something far more potent: the permanent war.

Karl Rove and W. have designed a mirror-image presidency. They take everything Poppy did that  conservatives regard
as a mistake and reverse it. The right thought that the father's war was too short? O.K., the son's war will be too long.
The right thought that the father's war should have ended with Saddam's disappearance? O.K., the son's war
will start with Saddam's disappearance and build its rationale around that blessed event.

Like his dad, Mr. Bush is not keen on delving into tricky domestic issues like Social Security, health care
and pension protection. It is hard for a Bush to envision the need for a safety net.

When the Bushes get into the bunker, democracy operates the way they like. It is not messy and cacophonous.
It is orderly and symphonic. There are sheriffs and outlaws, patriots and madmen, good and evil, Churchills and Hitlers.

The Bushes love doing things in secret and without a lot of meddling from know-nothings in Congress and smart alecks
in the press. In peacetime, such macho behavior comes across as highhanded, but in wartime, it looks like strong leadership. Critics of a warrior president risk seeming unpatriotic.

The Democrats are shackled; a majority voted against the Persian Gulf war in 1991. After it went off with the detachment
of a video game, they were pilloried. Now they fear that if they approach Desert Storm 2 the same way, raising objections
about motives, casualties, costs or the postwar strategy, they will be portrayed as McGovernite wimps. The Republicans,
fighting dictator malfeasance, can't trifle with Democratic charges about G.O.P. donors' corporate malfeasance.

In war, the polls are always jingoistically celestial. Thus spake Karl Rove, who has advised Republicans that they can gain control of Congress by exploiting the war on terrorism. The wartime press is respectful, producing gauzy TV interviews
and square-jawed photo spreads, rectifying mangled presidential syntax and mindlessly repeating Minister of Information
Ari Fleischer's celebration of the president as "resolute."

Mr. Bush gave a splendid speech at the U.N. He is right that Saddam is a scum with Scuds.

But there was no compelling new evidence. Mr. Bush offered only an unusually comprehensive version of the usual laundry list. Saddam is violating the sanctions, he tried to assassinate Poppy, he's late on his mortgage payments, he tips 10 percent, he has an unjustifiable fondness for "My Way," he gassed his own people, he doesn't turn down the front brim of his hat.

There was no more attempt to tie Saddam to Osama. The hawks don't know if Osama is dead or alive,
but they know that Saddam is alive and they can make him dead.

The warriors gave a raspberry to the U.N., making it obvious that Mr. Bush was just going through the multilateral motions by revealing that Gen. Tommy Franks is moving the U.S. Central Command from Tampa to Qatar to get ready for a war against Iraq.

The Bush principle of pre-emption is already being adored and exploited by other world leaders who have their own devious uses for it. Pakistan is worried that India will pounce in the Bush manner. And Mr. Bush's soulmate, Vladimir Putin, just warned the U.N. that he might pre-empt rebels in Georgia.

At lunch with New York Times reporters on Friday, Tom Daschle was muted in his criticism of the president and conceded that Mr. Bush's transformation to a wartime leader would make him a formidable candidate.

Yet the senator worried that Mr. Bush's preference for pre-emption could wreak havoc with global stability, and he wondered whether attacking Iraq would damage relationships with Indonesia, Pakistan and Middle East allies necessary to root out terrorists. "Is this now more important than the war on terror?" he asked.

Does America have conflicts of interest? Are we fighting one war in two places, or are the two wars tripping each other up?