George W. Bush has always been suspicious, even contemptuous, of
introspection. "I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror,"
he once bragged, "except when I comb my hair." Last week, though, he
suddenly yielded to reporters' endless, and hitherto fruitless,
efforts to plumb his moods. Days after aides had taken pains to tell
reporters the President had not expressed frustration in a meeting
about Iraq, Kelly O'Donnell of nbc pressed, "But are you frustrated,
sir?"

"Frustrated?" he replied. "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely
surprised. Sometimes I'm happy ... But war is not a time of joy.
These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times, and they're
difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country."
He might as well have busted out some French or broken into song.
George Bush was putting the country on the couch. Republicans and
Democrats alike flashed back to Jimmy Carter's assertion in July 1979
that the country was suffering "a crisis of confidence." Only
political junkies know that Carter never actually used the word
malaise. And only the most astute historian remembers that he got an
initial bounce in the polls. In the long run, though, the speech was
judged a disaster and set the stage for Ronald Reagan to use sunny
optimism to run Carter out of town. George H.W. Bush, accepting the
vice-presidential nomination in 1984, promised that the country would
not return to the "malaise days" of his Democratic predecessors.

One other President, also a Democrat, regretted venturing into
psychobabble. Bill Clinton, squatting in jeans in the press cabin of
Air Force One, said as he geared up for his re-election run that he
was "trying to get people to get out of their funk," provoking
mocking headlines like dr. clinton, national therapist.

Some of Bush's friends were mystified by his remark last week and
concluded that it must be a phrase he picked up in a briefing. "It's
pollster talk," said one person who speaks often to the President. A
senior Administration official said the President was simply saying
he recognizes that the protracted war on terrorism inevitably takes a
toll on the public. "He wasn't saying there's some kind of crisis of
confidence," the official said. "Just the opposite: he believes
Americans have the ability to sustain a long struggle." But Bush's
comment reflected the increased pessimism about Iraq that is seeping
through the Administration. "It's a little hard for us to keep saying
there'll be good days and bad days when they're all bad days," an
aide said, moping.

The President himself is unchanged, say people who spend private
hours with him, even as he gears up for the stretch run of the
midterm-election campaign, which has Republicans more worried than
they have been in a dozen years. His traditional summer sojourn at
his ranch was cut from a month to nine days, but he dived into the
gritty, sweaty labor that he loves. Each week aides put a new photo
album on a credenza outside the door to the Oval Office for the
President and visitors to savor; the current edition features Bush in
T shirt, ball cap and goggles, using power tools to cut a bike path
through Texas scrub.

Bush's aides maintain that they're in no funk either. Previewing the
final quarter of Bush's presidency, officials disclosed to Time that
the Administration is formulating a huge energy initiative designed
to "change the whole nature of the discussion" and challenge the
g.o.p., Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and
environmentalists. An adviser said Bush's views about global warming
have evolved. "Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bush and
Cheney--two oilmen--can bring all these parties kicking and screaming
to the table," the adviser said.

Whatever the coming months hold, Bush advisers said they could safely
predict there would be no more Dr. Phil-speak. The President doesn't
fret in private, they say, so he won't in public. A friend said Bush
hopes his ultimate legacy will be that he engaged the war on
terrorism and started a multigenerational process of winning it, the
way Harry Truman began winning the cold war. No one remembers Harry
Truman ruminating about the nation's temperament.