Video: Pursuing The Real George Bush

If Americans have learned anything about George Bush in his l4 months as President, it is that he is more complex and calculating than expected. He is open and accessible but also secretive and, at times, deceptive. He is a voracious reader of opinion polls, yet would prefer that his face not appear on the nightly news. He seems to be a warm and genuine father but is ill at ease in any bout with self-analysis.

These apparent contradictions are often difficult for the press to reconcile. The problem is most acute for television, since Bush is almost impossible to capture in the standard evening-news format. To get around this perplexity, the networks have lately adopted more unconventional approaches to Bush and his White House. Earlier this season, ABC's Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer did an hour-long interview with Bush and his popular wife Barbara on PrimeTime Live. Last week NBC's Tom Brokaw accompanied Bush through a "typical" day for a special titled A Day in the Life of the White House. The show illustrated just how vain is the hope that a President can be understood merely by being followed around.

It was hardly a typical presidential day. As is usual in such "behind-the- scenes" portraits, everything seen by viewers was shown for a reason. And although a White House official maintained that the schedule was "totally coincidental," it was actually loaded with celebrities and photogenic occasions. Among those Bush met with: the asthma poster child, a group of Shuttlenauts in sleek blue jump suits, the Super Bowl-champion San Francisco 49ers football team and a contingent of uniformed and bemedaled veterans of the Panama invasion.

NBC made it appear that Bush spends so much time greeting luminaries and other visitors that he has little time to mull over the great problems of the day. Here the White House erred badly by overdirecting: rather than making it possible for Brokaw and his crews to tape what Bush does best -- chew the fat with advisers for hours on end -- the White House allowed the cameras to record only the first three or four minutes of each meeting. These brief segments produced conversations that seemed stilted and staged.

Eclipsed by all these trivial pursuits was one of the peculiar and charming aspects of this presidency: Bush's relentless spontaneity. Bush is known for picking up the phone and calling foreign leaders, old friends in Texas, lowly bureaucrats in obscure agencies, to find out more about problems and policies. He likes to wander down to the office of his National Security Affairs adviser Brent Scowcroft to discuss the latest developments overseas. Sometimes, without a word to his wife, he'll invite visitors to lunch or dinner or even a sleep-over in the Lincoln Bedroom.