Reporter's portrayal of Bush puts forth puzzling paradox. (Commentary).

HERE in the capital, if nowhere else, the paradox of George W. Bush continues to puzzle the enlightened classes. The paradox is simply this: How could the inarticulate bumbler of the 2000 campaign -- a fellow so intellectually undistinguished, so-clearly "not one of us" -- prove to be such a deft and powerful leader?

The puzzlement will deepen with the publication later this month of an eagerly anticipated book. "Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush," is an account by Frank Bruni of the two years he spent covering the Bush campaign for The New York Times.

Bruni is a good writer and an excellent reporter, and during the campaign his coverage betrayed little of the reflexive ideological disdain the Times usually holds for Republican candidates not named Weicker, Jeffords or McCain. From my own observation trailing Bush, it was clear that he liked Bruni and Bruni liked him.

The relationship between reporter and presidential candidate, however, is inevitably complicated -- and probably doomed. From the candidate's perspective it is the same bond that exists between the fire hydrant and the dog. And the candidate doesn't see himself as the dog.

Parasites and pols

For his (or her) part, the reporter knows that the relationship is essentially parasitic. Without the candidate, reporters are unimportant; even with him, they are interchangeable. Few people like to think of themselves as interchangeable, and this is especially true of writers -- already a vain and self-regarding lot -- who have reached the high professional perch of covering a future president.

And so the reporters' natural skepticism toward the candidate tends to harden, often unconsciously, into feelings of superiority, and then into resentment. The resentment shows itself in a thousand ways. Every full-dress presidential campaign, for example, is bedeviled by complaints from reporters about how "scripted" the candidate is, about the lack of spontaneity he exhibits, automaton-like, in carefully staged events.

Maybe only an outsider can see the silliness of this complaint. Presidential candidates submit themselves to the unblinking gaze of dozens of intelligent, censorious observers, whose job is to convey to the world every misstep in hopes of making trouble. Spontaneity, under such circumstances, is strictly for chumps. An unscripted candidate will soon be food for worms. The resentment intensifies.

Bruni's picture of Bush is invaluable because it makes this resentment plain, and the resentment is important because it underlies the Bush paradox.

As a daily reporter and now as an author, Bruni tried to present a balanced picture of his subject. He tells many tales of Bush's off-the-wall sense of humor -- his habit, for instance, of placing his hands on the glossy domes of balding reporters while intoning, "Heal!"

And he dutifully cites instances of what he calls, with exquisite condescension, Bush's "moderately active mind." Bush read and liked a detective novel Bruni recommended, for example -- evidence of excellent taste, clearly. But the disdain is never far from the surface; it sometimes resembles the prissy horror of a dowager forced to keep company with a wino.

Vocabulary questioned

"When someone mentioned the word 'vegan' one day, Bush looked confused," Bruni writes.

"He didn't know what that was."

It gets worse.

"When somebody suggested he was a bit of a 'yenta,' he flashed befuddlement.

"He didn't know what that was, either."

Wait. There's more.

"The man had apparently never picked up a People magazine and never surfed the channels and rode the wave of 'Access Hollywood' or 'Entertainment Tonight,'" Bruni writes.

The future president confused the names of Roger Moore, the likable movie actor, and Michael Moore, the unlikable movie director. He mispronounced John Grisham's name "resoundingly enough that it could not be attributed to his Texas accent."

Grounds for impeachment? Maybe not, but Bruni also records several moments when Bush seemed unacquainted with his own policy proposals. And there's the familiar catalogue of malaprops, including the candidate's pledge to revitalize the economy by "making the pie higher."

Bruni's Bush is friendly, cheerful and a bit of a boob.

The first thing a Bush defender should do when confronting indictments like Bruni's is to concede them. President Bush is inarticulate, unaccountably so. He's intellectually unadventurous. The fine points of policy bore him. He doesn't watch "Access Hollywood."

So what? The Bush paradox rests on a misapprehension -- one shared by American journalists and intellectuals from Tom Paine through Henry Adams and H.L. Mencken, right on up to, well, Frank Bruni and much of today's Washington press corps. Gazing down on their subject from Olympian heights, reporters wonder why the gifts of the intellectual -- for language and rumination and subtlety -- aren't indispensable to the exercise of power.

And indeed they aren't. Leadership requires will, self-confidence, and moral clarity. These Bush has in abundance. And the best bet is that he will continue to demonstrate them, day by day, even as his intellectual superiors puzzle over their self-made paradox.

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist with Bloomberg News.