No one has yet written the golden rulebook of politics but, when they do,
one instruction will appear underlined and in bold type. In the chapter
marked "Leadership" it will say, "When there's a crisis, be there."

For presidents and prime ministers it's a simple enough law to observe.
All you have to do is shift yourself to the scene of the action. What you say when
you get there is hardly relevant; if you speak well, it's a bonus. Just make sure you
do the minimum: turn up. George VI knew that well enough. That is why he and
today's Queen Mother had the good sense to take themselves to the East End
during the Blitz. That one walkabout may have been the most effective in modern
history; the Windsors have been living off the goodwill it engendered for more than
half a century. Bill Clinton remembered the rule, too, ensuring that he was the lead
mourner at Oklahoma City's memorial service for the 168 killed by Timothy McVeigh's
1995 bomb. His performance there, and in the immediate aftermath of the attack, was
so well-judged that it rescued a presidency in dire trouble and put him on course for
re-election the following year.

Yet America today is led by a president who seems to have studied at the
Vladimir Putin school of politics. Just as the Russian leader enraged his
countrymen a year ago by failing to leave his holiday dacha to stand with
the widows of the Kursk submarine, so George Bush has managed to break
through the grief and shock of New Yorkers - and fill them with fury.

"Where are you Mr President? New York has a right to know?" bellowed Newsday yesterday.
That newspaper and others were incensed that two days after the World  Trade Centre's twin
towers had been turned into a cloud of asbestos-filled dust and rubble - and with one estimate
predicting as many as 20,000 dead - George Bush had still not shown up in their city.

He made it to the Pentagon (though not quickly) but New York, which believes it suffered in
less than an hour on Tuesday what Londoners endured for years during the war, was still
president-less yesterday afternoon. He'll be there today, prompted by the outcry, but many
New Yorkers say it's too late. The city has taken grave offence. As one veteran New York
observer put it to me yesterday, "Who needs Bush anyway? We'll get through this without him."

The failure to show up fast is just one of the black marks America's still-new president has
managed to notch up in the intense, unimaginable days since terror struck the United States.
By universal consent, the attack of September 11 will stand as the defining test of this young
presidency. A growing consensus says George Bush is flunking it badly.

He got it wrong from the very first moment, when he broke Tuesday's horrific news to a group of
teachers and schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida. Usually with Bush the words are passable enough
- they should be, they are written for him - but the tone of voice is wrong. Somehow he cannot manage
to read a script with conviction or even a sense that he understands the text in front of him.
"He wouldn't be hired as a newsreader in a local TV station," sniffs one Democratic speechwriter.

True to form, Bush was horribly off-key in Sarasota. "Today we've had a national tragedy," he said,
as if announcing a weather report. But then he got more than just the delivery wrong. "I have spoken
to the vice-president, to the governor of New York, to the director of the FBI and have ordered...
a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act," he said.

It's worth taking a good look at that sentence. Perhaps we should let pass his immediate reference
to the vice-president, offered as if - in confirmation of his critics - it is Dick Cheney rather than himself
who is truly in charge. ("Don't worry, I've spoken to the big guy and he says we're all gonna be OK.")
But look at the end of the sentence, the bit where Bush dared look up from his text for a second and ad lib.
We're going "to find those folks who committed this act." Folks? Folks?

"Jarring", columnist Mary McGrory called it, before noting that the Sarasota statement was delivered by Bush
wearing a face that was more "apprehensive than resolute". She was right. Bush wore the deer-in-the-headlights
expression made famous by his father's hapless deputy, Dan Quayle. On a day when Americans needed to
look up to a national father figure, they got the dauphin son - apparently scared out of his wits.

His next move - or moves - confirmed the impression. While the world was glued to its TV sets, and while
New York's firefighters were wading into burning buildings to save lives, the president was conducting a unique
aerial tour of the American heartland. Advised that it was unsafe to return to Washington, he flew first from
Florida to Shreveport, Louisiana, and finally to Offutt air force base in Omaha, Nebraska - touching down
in each spot to read yet another scripted statement. For long spells during that eerie day, no one even knew
where the president was. It was as if the Democratic slogan directed against Bush's father during the 1988
election campaign had come alive again: "Where was George?"

The zigzag air tour of the United States was probably forgiven at the time; there was too much else to think about.
But now Americans are having second thoughts. "How could Mr Bush appear in control, and calm the nation,
from a bunker in Nebraska?" asked yesterday's Washington Post. If the White House was safe for Cheney and
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (and even Daddy Bush, there coincidentally on a visit), then why not
for the president? And if he, with his escort of F-15s and F-16s, did not feel safe, then how were regular
Americans meant to feel?

Even the president's fellow Republicans have not been impressed. William Bennett, drug tsar to Bush Snr, said:
"This is not 1812. "It cannot look as if the president has run off, or it will look like we can't defend our most
important institutions."

White House officials have insisted that the president himself was itching to get back to the capital but that his secret
service bodyguard deemed it unsafe. "Bullshit," says one servant of a past administration. The secret service always
advises ultra-caution, he says; most presidents make the political calculation to overrule them. Bill Clinton did it
all the time; if he hadn't, he'd have barely done a walkabout. But Bush did not make that call.

And that is not the only comparison Americans are beginning to make between their current leader and the previous one.
They know Clinton would never have allowed himself to be ferried in secret around the country like a deposed head
of state fleeing a coup. He would have wanted to send the message that he was in command, unafraid and defiantly
denying the terrorists the pleasure of emptying the capital.

But that is the least of it. Clinton would have known how to find the right beat, to have sensed the national mood and
addressed it. That almost supernatural talent for empathy was his greatest political gift. This week has proved that his successor, though hailed for his affable, neighbour-at-the-barbecue charm, has no such talent. He seems wooden,
unreflective and oddly out of tune with human emotion. Small wonder that the secret service codename for the Bush
presidential zone is "the package". They don't come much more packaged than George W.
 

Americans are not confined to their past when looking for leaders who might guide them through this horror -
much as they might yearn for a Roosevelt or Kennedy. Some unexpected heroes have emerged. Defence secretary
Donald Rumsfeld remembered the golden rule, stayed in the Pentagon and helped emergency workers stretcher
away the injured from the stricken wing of his massive department. Tony Blair has won plaudits in Britain and the
United States for adopting just the right tone of gravity and resolve - even promising to "eradicate evil" without
descending into the comic-book "good will prevail" cliches deployed by Bush.

It is not fanciful to see Blair emerging as the effective leader of any western anti-terror coalition, given the
empty-suit vacuum offered by his American counterpart.

The man of the hour is, without question, the man on the ground: New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. On the scene
within minutes, his suit and hair white with ash, he has the iron rule of politics ingrained in his bone marrow.
He knows about being there, he knows about standing with the people you represent, knows that leading
is also about belonging.

This week has been a tour de force by him and the state governor, George Pataki; bitter rivals, now side by side,
facing the press constantly, answering questions (which Bush has so far refused to do) and sounding like men
aware of the grief that has befallen their city and country. Reviled by so many liberals for his pull-no-punches style,
he has become the man America wants to turn to.

The analysts and foreign policy experts will say none of this matters, that the real concern is not whether George W
can sound right on television but whether he can make the strategic leaps this crisis will demand. Does he have it
in him to see that the US must abandon Bush's missile defence "umbrella" fantasy and make the alliances it will need
to conquer global terrorism? Can he undo the damage left by his Kyoto-scrapping, "America first" rhetoric and
make the US a leader again? Perhaps these are the judgments that will ultimately count: but few believe Bush has
a chance of performing on these questions of substance any better than he has on matters of style.

Watching it all will be his predecessor, currently holed up in Australia, unable to get back home. Bill Clinton must
be a caged panther right now, pacing up and down in front of his TV set, itching with frustration. He always said
that great presidents were made great by the times, by the challenges they had to face: Lincoln had the civil war,
Roosevelt had to beat the depression and Hitler.

Clinton himself ruled over eight serenely prosperous years: history never set him the mammoth task he believed
would prove his greatness. History has set it instead for George W Bush. But, as this week seems to be proving,
crises do not expose strength alone: they can also reveal the most awful weakness.